A former journalist at the now-Web-only Tucson Citizen is claiming that Gannett, the paper's parent company, didn't live up to its end of the bargain after the 138-year-old paper went bust back in May.
Alice Flick, the longtime TC scribe, who wrote under the byline A.J. Flick, claims Gannett screwed her out of a severance package the company offered her to stay on as a writer as the paper went down in flames.
In a lawsuit filed in Pima County Superior Court and uncovered by Courthouse News, Flick says that in March, Gannett employees were offered a severance package equal to a week's worth of pay for every year the employee was with the company -- not a bad deal considering Flick had been with Gannett for 15 years.
Flick claims that as she was going down with the sinking ship that was the Citizen, she had other job opportunities that she turned down because of the promises made by Gannett.
After agreeing to the severance package, Flick was fired from the paper in April, according to court documents, and then, when the Citizen finally folded in May, Gannett refused to pay up.
We called Gannett to try to get its take on the lawsuit, but the media giant has yet to get back to us.
As for Flick, we called her lawyer, Adam Watters, but his phone has been disconnected. Hmmm?
Flick is asking that the severance package she was promised be tripled and is seeking damages for breach of contract and "detrimental reliance."