(The following article by Erin Einhorn was posted on the Philadelphia Daily News website on August 3.)
PHILADELPHIA — It’s bright. It’s quick. It’s free. And SEPTA, for the most part, has been thrilled with the pretty Metro tabloid that a Scandinavian company has distributed to SEPTA passengers for more than five years.
But SEPTA has one fairly major complaint with the Metro: The newspaper hasn’t paid its monthly fee to SEPTA in more than two years.
As of this week, said SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney, the Metro owed $1.45 million. SEPTA filed suit last year to collect the cash. A mediation is scheduled for later this month.
“We like the product,” Maloney said. “We are able to publish a full page of SEPTA information in every newspaper. It’s a great benefit to us… They simply are not paying.”
Johan Hansson, the local publisher for TPI Metro PA and Transit Publications, Inc., did not return calls seeking comment. Lawyer David Garcia-Villarreal, who represents the company in the lawsuit, also did not return calls.
In court papers, Metro argued that SEPTA breached its contract with Metro when it failed to ensure that bus drivers would not discard papers distributed on buses and on para-transit vehicles.
Metro also claimed in a counter suit that when it signed a contract with SEPTA, agreeing to pay $45,000 per month, SEPTA represented that Metro would have exclusive distribution rights on SEPTA property and in SEPTA vehicles.
That right was challenged in a lawsuit filed shortly after the Metro began publication in January 2000 by newspaper publishers who complained of unfair competition. Among those publishers was Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., which publishes the Daily News and Inquirer.
SEPTA reached a settlement with the publishers in November, 2001, agreeing not to give Metro distribution preference on SEPTA property for 18 months, except on buses.
It’s unclear if that settlement was a factor in Metro’s decision to stop making payments to SEPTA. Metro continued to pay SEPTA until March 13, 2003, when it made its last payment, Maloney said.
Despite the dispute, SEPTA last year exercised its option to continue its contract with Metro for another three years.
According to SEPTA, the new contract calls for Metro to pay SEPTA $65,000 a month through the end of 2007.
“The contract is quite clear,” Maloney said. “I don’t think it could possibly be clearer that they were going to pay us this amount of money each month for the length of the contract.”