Court upholds firing of Scranton Times-Tribune source

A state attorney general's agent who fed information about a grand jury investigation to the Scranton Times-Tribune has failed in his bid to get his job back. The Commonwealth Court ruled that James Kolojejchick -- who was fired and later jailed because of information he shared with newspaper editor John Murphy -- knew what he was doing when he told investigators that he hadn't been in contact with the newspaper. The contact was about a story the newspaper wrote that generated a still-pending libel suit.

The court writes: "The newspaper editor needed a second source to confirm the story
published in January 2004 in order to mitigate the newspapers’ exposure in the
lawsuit. The newspaper editor met with [Kolojejchick] in December 2004. [Kolojejchick] told the editor that he had heard from the OAG attorney conducting the grand jury investigation that the Commissioners had testified in an evasive manner. In response to a further plea from the editor, [Kolojejchick] put this information in the form of an affidavit."

Kolojejchick was fired, and his union took the case to arbitration and lost. This case was an unsuccessful appeal of that arbitrator's ruling.

Read the Commonwealth Court ruling in full