Suing the boss

Once again, it’s pop quiz time! Who said the following in 1976:

“Grave dancing is an art that has many potential benefits. But one must be careful while prancing around not to fall into the open pit and join the cadaver.”

If you guessed Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell, you have a very good memory – or you may be one of the six current or former Los Angeles Times staffers who filed a federal class action lawsuit against Zell and Tribune last week in California.

Zell’s quote serves as a prologue for the 64-page lawsuit stemming from his buyout last year of Tribune that more than tripled the company’s debt to nearly $13 billion, now shouldered by the company’s 18,000 employees. The lawsuit seeks to recover money lost from the employee stock-option plan, which Zell used to make the deal, as well as removal of Zell and other members of Tribune’s board of directors.

(Tribune Co. is the owner of The Baltimore Sun, whose recent layoffs, budget cuts and redesign under new management have been adeptly chronicled by my colleague, Liz Farmer.)

Zell has already called the lawsuit “frivolous” and “unfounded,” and much of it recaps the documented changes Tribune and its subsidiaries have undergone since he purchased it.

But, as Richard Siklos of Fortune magazine writes: “the notion that these might constitute actionable wrongs is fresh, as is the idea that Zell is a villain for wildly overpaying for the company and saddling it with an additional $8.3 billion in debt.”

So what do you think? Is the lawsuit a legitimate employee beef? Or simply sour grapes?

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