Axe Men

JOHN DERUS, THE former DFL state Senate candidate and longtime Hennepin County Commissioner who maintains that an error by the Star Tribune lost him the '96 Minneapolis mayoral primary, filed suit against the paper last Friday. Derus's complaint alleges that he was libeled by the Strib when, on election day 1996, the newspaper printed his picture alongside an unrelated story on charity fraud. After Derus lost his election bid by a slim margin, he asked the Minnesota Supreme Court to order a new election. The justices refused, causing Derus to cry foul again, claiming that Justice Alan Page's opinion was biased, given his ties to the Strib (its parent company at the time, Cowles Media, has made frequent donations to Page's private, nonprofit educational foundation). A successive plea to the state Senate fell on similarly deaf ears.

Derus, who's now working as a light-rail consultant, has hired another Strib axe-grinder, Clinton Collins Jr., as his lead counsel. Collins, a local attorney, was fired from his gig as a Star Tribune columnist in August of '93 for allegedly failing to reveal a conflict of interest. After Collins took local news media to task for failing to hire commentators of color, the Strib dismissed him--ostensibly for not disclosing that he'd been talking to WCCO management about hosting a radio show.

In order to win the lawsuit, Derus will have to prove that the paper was indifferent to the harm it might do to his reputation. According to Collins, although public figures frequently lose libel cases because they can't prove this "reckless disregard for the truth," Derus's case is a cakewalk. "We have compelling facts," he intones. "Close to 30 staffers saw the page before it went out, and it was re-laid out twice." Furthermore, claims Collins, given the paper's penchant for "editorially attacking" his client, Derus's face is well known among its staffers.