• November 13, 2003

In a memo issued to employees late Wednesday, Gruner + Jahr USA chief executive officer Dan Brewster claimed the company had achieved three "significant objectives" from its breach of contract suit against former Rosie magazine editor Rosie O'Donnell: 1) The Judge determined that neither side was entitled to damages based upon his assessment that the magazine would never have been profitable. While we strongly disagree, we respect his opinion; 2) In our final day of testimony, G+J USA was completely exonerated of any and all of the charges of impropriety alleged by the O'Donnell camp in their effort to muddy the water; 3) When we filed this lawsuit, we had a 45 million dollar subscription liability. It was not clear at the time that we would have been able to successfully sell these subscribers to other publishers, although that turned out to be the case, demonstrating our good faith in mitigating damages. On Wednesday, Judge Ira Gammerman ruled that neither side had demonstrated "absolute certainty" that damages had occurred."