• by Ray Schultz , October 10, 2022

The sex abuse cases filed by former paperboys against Gannett Corp. are dragging on as the firm stalls in handing over documents to the plaintiffs, lawyers allege. 

In addition, Gannett is doubling down on its assertion that the cases belong not in the courts, under the Child Victims Act (CVA), but with New York State’s workers’ compensation system. 

Michael Dowd, representing the carriers, alleges that Gannett supplied “tens of thousands of pages of irrelevant materials while withholding relevant materials under spurious claims of attorney-client privilege,” the Rochester Bacon reports.   

Gannett denies this. 

Dowd has asked the court to force Gannett to provide the allegedly withheld records. Also, he requests that the judge determine if privilege applies. 

The former newspaper carriers claim they suffered sexual abuse at the hands of adult route supervisor Jack Lazeroff, who died in 2003.

The cases have been going on for three years. 

The first plaintiff, Rick Bates, says he was shocked by Gannett's tactic of moving the claims into the workman’s comp system. 

Bates argues that he “never missed a day of delivering Gannett's papers. So I can't simply claim a week or month's lost wages. It's not a broken ankle, I didn't just fall off my bike. It was a crime committed against me many, many times, by a Gannett employee -- and when I was an 11- and 12-year-old child -- who used his position of authority to gain access to me alone in my house and elsewhere."