NEWS
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
REPORTER FIRED
AFTER REGISTER-GUARD
LAWSUIT
lthough a written decision in the civil suit filed by former Register-Guard entertain-
ment writer and reporter Serena Markstrom Nugent has yet to be filed almost three
weeks after the case was dismissed, issues from the case continue to arise.
In the wake of the trial, Markstrom Nugent’s fellow entertainment writer and
the paper’s Eugene Newspaper Guild union co-president Randi Bjornstad has
also been fired.
After Judge Josephine Mooney of the Lane County Circuit Court dismissed the case
with prejudice, the R-G placed Bjornstad and Joe Clark and Horst Lueck, both in infor-
mation systems, on paid administrative leave. Bjornstad was then fired Sept. 14 for “dis-
honesty, insubordination and destroying company property,” according to Bob Keefer’s
Eugene Art Talk blog, which broke the story. Keefer is a former R-G arts reporter as well.
Bjornstad, a 28-year veteran of the daily paper, tells EW that there are “multiple avenues
for approaching this breach of federal law and Guild contract.” And she says, “Those are
still being looked at.”
Though Bjornstad advised Markstom Nugent in her capacity as her union representa-
tive, Bjornstad was unable to mention that during her testimony in which she was a lead
witness for the plaintiff during the late August trial, which lasted about six days. Keefer
was also a witness.
Bjornstad says in her years as a writer for the R-G she never had a reprimand or any
other disciplinary action against her until Markstrom Nugent’s case. Bjornstad’s first repri-
mand occurred in Jan. 2014, right after the Guild filed a grievance, she says. The timing of
her firing after the trial speaks to retaliation, Bjornstad says.
Markstrom Nugent was fired in 2014 for similar reasons as cited in Bjornstad’s case:
being “dishonest, insubordinate and having destroyed company property” after checking
her email and deleting some messages while on pregnancy-related disability leave.
Markstrom Nugent’s original court documents argue that while Markstrom might have
made errors when the reporter switched from arts to a news beat she was not trained for,
the paper “precipitously re-characterized any of Ms. Markstrom’s mistakes in the months
before her pregnancy as serious performance deficiencies.”
Mooney dismissed Markstrom Nugent’s case on Aug. 31 for spoliation, otherwise
known as destruction of evidence, over the allegedly deleted emails and text messages.
The spoliation issue had been addressed previously by Judge Charles Carlson who ruled
that the “sanction of dismissal is not warranted” and let the case go to trial.
While a jury in Mooney’s courtroom heard arguments about the case for several days,
Mooney dismissed the lawsuit on spoliation before a jury decision was made.
In his response to the motion for sanctions, Markstrom Nugent’s attorney Chris Lund-
berg writes the R-G’s motion was “an overblown attempt to prevent this case from being
heard on the merits.”
Lundberg writes that Markstrom retained two versions of all emails deleted from her
R-G account and therefor no spoliation occurred, and he argues in court documents that
Markstrom Nugent’s editor Ilene Aleshire deleted an unknown number of emails in regard
to Markstrom Nugent from the R-G’s system and destroyed handwritten notes about her
initial meetings with the reporter to discuss her “purported ‘performance deficiencies.’”
Markstrom Nugent’s attorneys have said they will appeal the decision to a higher court.
great shoes just don’t
happen, they are made.
A
EW Editor Camilla Mortensen is a friend of Markstrom Nugent and Keefer. Markstrom Nugent consulted with but did not
hire Jennifer Middleton who is an attorney with EW owner Art Johnson’s law firm.
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eugeneweekly.com • September 22, 2016
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