Jury rules against Donald Rosenberg

A jury found for the Plain Dealer and the Cleveland Orchestra’s governing body yesterday, rejecting all of reporter Donald Rosenberg’s legal claims arising out of the decision by the Plain Dealer to relieve him of his duties as the Orchestra’s reviewer and reassign him.

As anyone who has followed my speculations on this lawsuit knows, I have always been skeptical of the legal merits of Rosenberg’s claims. As the NY Times article linked to above explains, the lawsuit “became a cause célèbre among music critics, who charged that The Plain Dealer had caved in to complaints from a subject of its reviews, touching a raw nerve among those who review arts for a living.”

Nevertheless, I could not discern any contractual right Rosenberg had to the job reviewing the Orchestra, so the reassignment didn’t seem to constitute any breach of contract. The Orchestra’s representatives have every right to complain about negative reviews to the Plain Dealer’s management as long as they didn’t lie about him in expressing those complaints. And the addition of an age discrimination claim simply didn’t fit the gist of the complaint — how could it be that the Plain Dealer’s reassignment of Rosenberg under pressure from the Orchestra constituted age discrimination?

If I were Rosenberg’s lawyer, I’d advise him not to appeal. The Los Angeles Times reports, however, that he hasn’t ruled out that possibility. It’s not that I don’t care if the Plain Dealer did cave into pressure from the Orchestra (certainly not the only quarter from which complaints about Rosenberg were heard). It’s that I don’t think a lawsuit by an individual who is reassigned as a result of that kind of pressure is the means of ensuring journalistic integrity.