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Classical Music Critic Fails to Show Unlawful Retaliation

  

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In Rosenberg v. Musical Arts Association, an Ohio jury found against classical music critic Donald Rosenberg, who claimed he was reassigned because he negatively reviewed the Cleveland Orchestra.

Plaintiff attorney Steven Sindell told the jury that Rosenberg was not biased in his opinion that the orchestra's guest conductors were more talented than the orchestra's own musical director, Franz Welser-Most. Instead, said Mr. Sindell, the evidence would show that powerful people at the city's Musical Arts Association defamed Rosenberg and interfered with Rosenberg's employment because they did not like his criticism of the conductor whom they had chosen to employ.

For the defense, Littler Mendelson's Suellen Oswald told the jury that Susan Goldberg, the Cleveland Plain Dealer's editor, reasonably concluded over a period of more than a year that Mr. Rosenberg had a "premeditated and negative view about Mr. Welser-Most and the way he conducted the orchestra...and that his reviews of the concerts he covered had become predictably negative."  Moreover, Mr. Rosenberg had not lost a penny as a result of his reassignment.

The jury found in favor of the defense.

Watch opening statements in Donald Rosenberg v. Musical Arts Association trial webcast on CVN.