Attorneys for Nexstar Media Group have asked a court to compel one of its former news director to sit for a deposition in a lawsuit he filed against the television broadcaster.
The motion, filed on March 4, comes weeks after Nexstar sent a notice to its ex-employee, Stanton Tang, requesting him to appear for a deposition, so the company could learn more about the grounds for his defamation case.
The case was launched last summer, about a year after Nexstar terminated Tang from his post at WOOD-TV (Channel 8), its NBC affiliate in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The firing followed a weeks-long investigation into the circumstances of a memo he directed, and his then-assistant News Director Amy Wood wrote, encouraging reporters and producers to pull back on their coverage of local Pride Month events.
The written directive led to a revolt within the newsroom, and copies of it leaked to other press, including FTV Live (the first to report on it) and The Desk (the first to publish the memo publicly). In addition to Tang and Wood, Nexstar also dismissed two news producers suspected of leaking the memo.
Tang and Wood are both suing Nexstar for defamation. Both said they were executing their duties as news directors faithfully and were in compliance with the company’s acceptable behavior and editorial policies, but were scapegoated by Nexstar executives because the memo, once made public, invited negative attention to WOOD-TV and its parent company.
Nexstar has denied the accusations, and moved for a federal judge overseeing the early phases of the cases to dismiss them. The judge declined to do so last September, clearing the way for both cases — which are being tried separately — to head to trial.
In February, Nexstar sent a notice to attorneys representing Tang with a demand to depose their client, according to court documents filed earlier this month. The notice came after Tang’s attorneys sent Nexstar a similar request, though theirs was through informal channels, the broadcaster said.
Tang and his attorneys have not complied with the request. Instead, according to Nexstar, the former news director and his lawyers demanded Nexstar executives sit for a deposition first, the broadcaster complained.
Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — a set of guidelines that courts follow in civil cases — the party that first requests a deposition through a formal notice is entitled to go first, and the other party cannot change that order unless they have good cause for doing so.
“Here, while Plaintiff (Tang) was the first party to send an informal request to take depositions in this matter, Defendants (Nexstar) were the first to properly and formally notice Plaintiff’s deposition,” attorneys for Nexstar wrote. “Plaintiff then unilaterally decided to interfere with Defendants’ ability to take Plaintiff’s deposition until he first deposes nearly ten of Defendant Nexstar’s corporate witnesses…absent [the] Plaintiff’s showing of good cause, the Defendant — who was first to properly and formally notice the deposition — should take the Plantiff’s deposition first.”
Nexstar has subsequently asked the federal judge overseeing the case to compel Tang to sit for their requested deposition. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for April 1.
