AMI vs. USA

When American Media kingpin David Pecker imported U.K. editor Paul Field and his crack squad of Fleet Street-ers to take over the Enquirer, he didn’t count on one thing: good ol' fashioned Yankee litigiousness. According to a mole deep inside the company, a handful of the 23 staffers displaced by Field’s hires have been individually threatening to invoke a labor law that prohibits U.S. employers from hiring foreign workers when native sons will do. The only loophole to the law is a proviso allowing companies to hire employees from abroad if they possess unique qualifications unavailable in the American labor pool. Insert dumpster diving joke here.

The ex-staffers’ gambit seems to be paying off. Our source says at least a few of the potential litigants have received handsome confidential settlements from AMI, possibly because the company is leery of dragging the cases through court, which might force it to make a public account of its coffers. (Thomas Severson, AMI’s latest CFO, left the company on May 9 for unknown “personal reasons.”) Not surprisingly, AMI spokesman Stu Zakim denied there were any “lawsuits, threatened or imaginary” resulting from the Enquirer purge.

Photo: NYDN