Mason, Griffin, & Pierson, P.C. Timely Information

After winning a contract to appraise Utah's largest newspaper, the Salt Lake Tribune, a Princeton Township company has become embroiled in a battle for control of the paper between a Mormon-friendly media company and a Catholic family that has been critical of the powerful church.

Hired late last year to set a value on the paper in case courts order it be sold, officials from Princeton Management Inc. put a tentative price tag of $325 million on the daily.

But when a potential buyer balked at the estimate, finding it too high, the Princeton appraisal firm was slapped with a suit alleging it overstated the paper's worth by more than $100 million.

Last week, a Superior Court judge in Trenton threw out the lawsuit against Management Planning.

Yet the battle may not be over for the Princeton Township firm, says its lawyer.

The Catholic McCarthey family, who owned the Tribune for nearly a century before losing control of it during a tax avoidance maneuver, continues to struggle on multiple legal fronts to buy the paper back from MediaNews Group.

"The future of this case really depends upon what (the McCarthey family) decides to do, and they have already filed additional papers with the court that will extend the time they have to respond to the current decision," said the attorney, Don Veix, who is based in Princeton Township.

Nevertheless, Veix feels fairly confident any future battles will be easier than what Princeton Management has just faced.

"It was a pretty resounding victory for us. I don't see this case as having much life left in it," said Veix.

On its merits alone, the fight between Management Planning, which declined to be interviewed for this article, and the McCarthey family, which controls Salt Lake Tribune Publishing (separate from the Tribune), has colorful players and twists and turns.

But the case has roots that date to the establishment of the Tribune and curl around the foundations of the Mormon church.

In New Jersey, the Superior Court playing field has been peppered with a rare display of concentrated legal talent.

The McCarthey's attorney, Seth Waxman, served as U.S. Solicitor General under President Clinton.

And attorneys representing MediaNews work for the firm that Clinton used during the Monica Lewinski scandal.

"It's hard to describe how good it feels to go up against competition like that and win so decisively," Veix said.

"It's like being a pitcher and striking out Barry Bonds," he said, in reference to the famed San Francisco Giants slugger.

The hard feelings between the Mormon church and the McCarthey family go back nearly 100 years, but the story that brought the struggle to Princeton Township began in 1997.

At the time, a majority interest in the Tribune still belonged to the descendants of Thomas Kearns, a mining magnate and U.S. senator who bought the Salt Lake Tribune around 1900.

In the late 1990s, looming estate taxes threatened the family's ability to maintain control of the paper. Family members decided to avoid the tax bill by selling the Tribune and several smaller papers to a local cable company.

The McCarthey family was one branch of Kearns' descendants and under terms of the $730 million asset sale, they were to maintain editorial control of the paper for five years - enough time to avoid estate taxes - and then receive an exclusive option to buy the paper back for fair market value - currently pegged around $352 million.

Soon afterward, however, the Tribune became the property of AT&T through an acquisition. And AT&T wouldn't sell the Tribune back to the McCarthey family. Some observers doubted it would be in AT&T's financial interest to honor the deal with the McCartheys in view of tensions between them and the politically-powerful Mormon church.

Instead, in late 2000, AT&T sold the paper for $200 million to someone supported by the church: Dean Singleton, a former president of the then Trenton Times who now owns 48 daily papers.

The deal between AT&T and Singleton's MediaNews Group infuriated the McCarthey family and sent them running to the courts in 2001.

The family argued that the sale constituted a gross violation of the original contract. Others argued that a 50-year-old partnership between the Tribune and its main competition, the Mormon-church-owned Deseret News, gave AT&T authority to make the sale.

Terms of the partnership - which has the two papers sharing their advertising, circulation and printing operations - give both papers veto power over certain ownership changes. A federal district court judge in Salt Lake City upheld the sale.

The McCartheys appealed and in February a panel of circuit court judges opened the door for the McCartheys to repurchase the editorial portion of the Tribune.

The case will now return to the district court for a new trial on whether the McCartheys can buy only the editorial portion. Lawyers for both sides did not return calls for comment.

As legal maneuverings took place out West, a separate set of procedures occurred in New Jersey.

The ability to repurchase the paper will do the McCartheys little good if the Tribune's fair market value exceeds the amount that the family can afford to pay, and the family has been battling furiously about what the fair value is.

An initial round of appraisals - one commissioned by Singleton and one by the family - came in far apart. Singleton's appraiser valued the Tribune at $380 million. The McCarthey appraiser valued it at $218 million.

The two sides agreed to hire Management Planning to make a final appraisal and to average that with the closer of the two earlier appraisals - leading to the $352 million price tag, based on Management Planning's initial $325 million estimate.

That was immediately rejected by the McCartheys, who filed a lawsuit against Management Planning Jan. 17.

"Apparently the (McCarthey) appraiser told them that Management Planning had made some errors in applying professional standards," Veix said. "Management Planning strongly denies any violation of professional standards, and I think that position looks pretty strong now that a judge has rejected their claim."

Ironically, efforts to control the media first led the Mormons to Utah.

Back in 1844, when members of the faith lived together in Illinois, a founder of the religion, a New York native named Joseph Smith, ordered his followers to destroy the offices and printing facilities of a dissident newspaper.

Police arrested Smith for his actions. An anti-Mormon mob murdered him in jail, and the rest of the Mormons fled to the uninhabited region that came to be modern-day Utah.

More than 150 years later, practicing Mormons still make up two-thirds of Utah's population, and the church still influences nearly every aspect of life throughout the state.

However, since its creation by rebellious Mormons in 1871, the Salt Lake Tribune has always remained somewhere between hostile to and skeptical of the Mormon church.

The paper's efforts against the church peaked soon after it came under the ownership of Kearns.

The mining magnate, who won a seat in the U.S. Senate thanks to the Mormon church's blessing and a tradition of electing one non-Mormon senator, initially purchased the paper to silence its criticism of his campaign and the church in general.

But when the church withdrew its support and defeated his bid for re-election, Kearns not only turned against the church but vowed to ensure that all future Tribune owners would remain separate from the church.

Much litigation may remain in the future, but if the price remains at $352 million - a price McCarthey family members say they will not pay - the Mormon church may have finally won its battle against Kearns.