Alt-Weekly Petitions to Unseal Local Publisher's Divorce Records
By AAN Staff
may 1, 2009 09:35 am
Richard Mellon Scaife, the publisher of the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, has been in the courts for the past few years battling a contentious divorce dispute with his wife. The case has been kept tightly under wraps, and
Pittsburgh City Paper is asking a judge to open some of the records. "We're asking the court to release the decree sealing the case, so that we, and the public, can understand why even courtroom testimony in this case is under wraps," editor Chris Potter writes. The alt-weekly, which is being represented by the ACLU, is also asking a judge to open up the case's docket, "in order to keep abreast of future developments."
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that attorneys for Scaife and his wife don't want
City Paper to obtain either, saying the request poses a risk to their client's privacy and safety. "As soon as they get it, it's going to end up in a newspaper," Scaife's lead attorney H. Yale Gutnick said in court.