Tribune Company
435 North Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60611
April 2009
Dear Tribune Employee:
As you know, Tribune Company and many of its subsidiaries (Tribune) filed for bankruptcy protection on December 8, 2008. As part of the bankruptcy process, we are required to give creditors the opportunity to file claims for damages they believe are owed them by Tribune as of December 8, 2008. These claims must be filed by June 12, 2009, which is called “bar date”.
Enclosed is a copy of the “bar date” notice, a claim form and instructions for filing a claim. As an existing employee of Tribune, bankruptcy law requires that you receive this notice.
In most instances, you don’t need to take any action. The bankruptcy court has exempted existing employees from having to file employee-related claims, except in certain situations as described below.
Employees do not need to file claims for:
- Wages and benefits for which Tribune already received approval tom pay, including claims for wages, reimbursable expenses, health care benefits, vacation time, disability and workers compensation.
- Other employee benefits programs for which the court has not yet authorized the company to fully pay or perform, such as incentive compensation and rights relating to the ESOP. Likewise, employees do not need to file for various “contingent” claims that may arise in the future based on employee benefit programs existing prior to the petition date, such as retirement programs. If an employee has an individual contract, he/she does not need to file a claim for those contractual rights.
If, at any time during the Chapter 11 proceedings, Tribune will not be able to fully honor any of the foregoing employee benefits or will not perform under a contract with an individual employee, all impacted employees will receive notice and be given 30 days to file a claim.
If you feel you have been adversely impacted in some way by Tribune for actions that occurred prior to December 8, 2008, you should file a claim for the damages you believe you sustained. If you want to assert rights under any benefit program that was in place prior to December 8, 2008, but was subsequently modified (e.g. the severance program), you should file a claim. Claims must be filed by June 12, 2009.
If you have questions, contact the claims agent, Epiq, at 888/287-7568. You should consider consulting your own legal counsel if you feel you have a claim to file against Tribune.
Sincerely,
Gerry Spector
Executive Vive President/Chief Administrative Officer
No comments:
Post a Comment
For now, we're opening this blog to Anonymous comments. This will continue as long as civility rules. Disagree as you may, just keep it clean and stay on topic. No profanity, and no name calling. We reserve the right to moderate such comments, though the person who made it may come back and reword their message in a more civil way.