Philadelphia County Judge Allan Tereshko has dismissed the remaining claims filed against former KYW anchor Larry Mendte by ex-co anchor Alycia Lane. Lane, currently an anchor at KNBC in Los Angeles, accused Mendte of invasion of privacy. The Philadelphia Daily News has details:

Tereshko dismissed the civil case filed against CBS 3, but had allowed some of the charges against Mendte to stand, pending further investigation.

Those final claims were dropped last week after the judge found that Lane had deleted key emails from her computer.

“As far as I’m concerned, Lane already got her pound of flesh from Larry in the federal criminal case. Larry has done nothing but try to make amends and move on, but she has nothing but vengeance in heart,” said Mendte’s attorney, Julia Morrow.

Lane’s attorney, who says the the judge was against Lane from the start of the trial, said he plans to appeal the ruling. He said he was “elated with happiness” by the final dismissal, which allows him to appeal the case to Superior Court.

A Philadelphia judge has dismissed former KYW anchor Alycia Lane‘s defamation lawsuit against the CBS O&O.

Lane, who was a KYW anchor from 2003-08, accused her former station of defaming her after she was terminated from the station after she was involved in a physical altercation with a New York City police officer. She also brought a lawsuit against her former co-anchor, Larry Mendte, after he hacked into her email and leaked private information.

The judge threw out some, but not all, of the claims against Mendte. He pleaded guilty to hacking into her email in 2008.

Lane currently anchors the morning newscast on KNBC, the NBC O&O in Los Angeles.

Former Philadelphia anchor Larry Mendte has penned a column in the April edition of Philadelphia magazine about the “desperate” state of local news in the city. Mendte, currently a commentator at WPIX in New York City, was fired from KYW in 2008 after a highly-publicized tryst with co-anchor Alycia Lane. He writes:

The world has changed, and TV news hasn’t. Anchors sit at a desk at a designated time, tossing to reporters at the scene of the story you already read about that morning. The weatherperson talks forever in front of a map; the sports anchor shows you 10 seconds of highlights from three games. As it was in the ’70s, so it is now. My kids and their friends from elementary school could do a similar newscast with Flip cams, Skype, a green screen and video from YouTube, and it would be a heck of a lot more interesting.

Local news has to start not only changing with the times, but catching up with the times. We already have the information; tell us what it means.  Read more

Despite the best efforts of CBS’s legal team, it appears that the trial of Alycia Lane‘s civil suit against Larry Mendte and CBS will remain in Philadelphia.

According to the Philadelphia Daily News, the Pennsylvania state supreme court has ruled that the trial will remain in the city where Lane worked alongside Mendte on the KYW anchor desk.  The ruling is a victory for Lane, whose legal team has been fighting to keep the trial in Philly while CBS has attempted to move the proceedings to New York, citing a clause in Lane’s contract that stipulates such a move. Read more

Just as the media circus was beginning in Philadelphia for the Alycia Lane-Larry Mendte civil case, CBS Corp., the anchors’ former employer, filed an appeal with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asking that the case be moved to a different venue.

According to WCAU, Chief Justice Ron Castille issued a stay in the case just moments before jury selection was set to begin Friday morning so that the appeal could be heard.

Earlier this morning, the civil judge issued a gag order prohibiting the use of electronic devices in the courtroom.

The case was frontpage news as Lane and Mendte arrived in Philadelphia this week and local stations, including WCAU and WTXF, discussed the trial during their morning newscasts today. Read more

“This Time It’s Personal” reads the frontpage headline on the Philadelphia Daily News as jury selection began today in the civil suit between former KYW co-anchors, and alleged lovers, Larry Mendte and Alycia Lane.

While Mendte and Lane’s He Said-She Said drama continues in a Philadelphia courtroom today, local media outlets are focusing on two of the juicier episodes of the anchors’ relationship, which have been illustrated in recent court depositions…

The Tiffany’s Necklace:
Mendte bought an $800 platinum necklace for Lane after he lost a bet with his co-anchor over the color of white zinfandel. According to court documents, Lane and Mendte had a friendly argument about the wine and when it turned out that Lane was correct in saying that the wine was pink, not white, Mendte said that he owed her and she suggested something from Tiffany’s.

So Mendte went out and purchased an $800 necklace from Tiffany’s using his credit card, an act that would eventually be discovered by his wife while checking the AmEx statement. Read more

WPIX reporter Larry Mendte returned from Libya last week after a hectic trip to the country’s capital with U.S. Congressman Curt Weldon, and now some are questioning the wisdom of the mission as Weldon’s planned meeting with Muammar Qaddafi never materialized.

“This is a station that fires people left and right, and they’ll pay for a Libya trip,” a WPIX insider complained to the New York Post recently.

This morning the Post published a takedown of WPIX, which is currently trailing far behind its rival WNYW in the ratings, and wondered if Mendte’s trip to Libya was less about bolstering the station’s hard news identity and more about repairing the image of the troubled reporter, who is in the midst of a messy legal battle with his former KYW co-anchor Alycia Lane: Read more

As the legal battle between former KYW co-anchors Larry Mendte and Alycia Lane drags on, one Philadelphia journalist is saying that she’s fed up with the negative public image that Lane has presented of female journalists.

Morgan Zalot writes in The Philly Post:

I’m certain that Lane wasn’t the first bright-eyed, shiny-haired, perfectly built female reporter to let her fame and ego get the best of her, and I’m certain she won’t be the last. But her misadventures continue to bring us-—at least in my eyes, as a young female journalist—-steps back. And if you read her story and believe any part of it, you can see that, while it may have been a sad one at one point—-a young reporter-starlet letting the limelight get in the way of her real career—-it’s hard to argue that she was the victim in everything.

So what do you think? Is Lane giving female journalists a bad name? Sound off in the comments section below…

Larry Mendte, who has been working as a contributor for WPIX, is currently in Libya, covering U.S. congressman Curt Weldon‘s discussions with Muammar Qaddafi and hoping to potentially land an interview.

Mendte, along with WPIX photographer John Frasse, recently traveled to Tripoli with Weldon, a Republican representative from Pennsylvania, and has provided exclusive coverage of the diplomatic engagement for the New York CW-affiliate.

“Today’s dawn could bring new hope for an end to the crisis in Libya,” Mendte said on Tuesday, reporting live from Tripoli, “that’s because in a strange twist to this saga, the leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi has reached out to an American he has dealt with in the past” (video above).

So how did this “strange twist,” as well as Mendte’s seemingly unlikely coverage of it, come about? Read more

Amid the tawdry details of Alycia Lane‘s tryst with Larry Mendte brought to light in their current legal battle is one detail that is especially jaw-dropping: Lane’s salary.

According to court documents, reviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Lane told Mendte’s lawyer that she made $780,000 in 2007, while working as a marquee anchor for Philadelphia’s KYW.

“How much money were you making in 2007?” Mendte’s lawyer asked Lane during her deposition. “2007, I was making $780,000.”

The figure is especially significant since Lane’s rising salary has been mentioned as a motivation for Mendte hacking into her e-mail account between 2006 and 2008. At the time, Mendte was making roughly $700,000 a year.