"Fearless: The Richard A. Sprague Story" coming to bookstores soon!

(Note: This will be the most carefully-written blog post in American history.) While it isn't labeled as such, what appears to be the official/authorized biography of Richard A. Sprague is on its way to bookstores, courtesy of our friends at the American Bar Association.

"Richard A. Sprague's philosophy holds that the law is sacred in this land, and as a lawyer he has always had the solemn obligation to fight as hard as he could to make the law serve his client, whether the client be the people of the United States, the people of Pennsylvania, or an individual caught up in the system," the blurb on the ABA site says. "Read this compelling story of a man who wasn't afraid to risk everything to fight for his fellow man and made a difference in the legal profession."

In short: The perfect Secret Santa gift for John Murphy!

Forbes columnist writes about Times-Tribune libel case

A flack for the National Association of Manufacturers writes at forbes.com about The Times-Tribune and the libel case involving John Murphy, Jennifer Henn, Joe Corcoran, and Randy Castellani. The piece, headlined "Too much freedom of the press," is about how a federal shield law is a bad idea. Right.

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

Times-Tribune source in prison case held in contempt

A month (!) after a judge ruled that a Scranton Times-Tribune source illegally leaked grand jury testimony to the newspaper, the Times Leader (Friday) and The Times-Tribune (Saturday) are on the story, kind of. The source, state narcotics agent James Kolojejchick, was fired in the summer of 2004 and is to be sentenced for contempt of court in March. Ron Lieback of the TL names reporter Jennifer Henn and editor John Murphy as the newspaper staffers involved in the case, while Michael Race's terse nine-paragraph story does not. Neither piece really does the story justice, given the stakes (the shield law for reporters, as well as a lot of professional reputations) involved.

Click the headline for the TL story, click here for the T-T story

Read the January 2004 Scranton Times story that started it all