Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Sports Columnist Rests in Fight With Los Angeles Times

10/26/2015 4:59:00 PM, Matt Reynolds
     LOS ANGELES (CN) - Retired sports columnist T.J. Simers rested his employment discrimination case on Monday as he seeks $18 million in damages from the LA Times.
     Simers, 65, sued the Times two years ago, claiming the paper pushed him out after he suffered a "mini-stroke" in Phoenix, where he was covering spring training for the Dodgers and Angels baseball teams. Simers said he was later diagnosed with complex migraine syndrome.
     Now in the sixth week of trial, Simers rested his case on Monday morning, shortly after his wife Ginny Simers testified.
     Ginny Simers said her husband is a shadow of his former self since he left the Times in 2013 and then quit his next job as a columnist for the Orange County Register.
     Los Angeles Times' attorney Linda Savitt asked Ginny Simers if her husband's health problems between 2013, when he suffered from the collapse, and the following year when he was diagnosed with shingles and skin cancer caused him emotional distress.
     "No," she replied.
     After Simers' attorney Courtney Rowley asked her to elaborate, Ginny Simers said that it was the end of her husband's career as a columnist that hit him hardest.
     "The stress came from not working at the LA Times," she said. "He's a completely different person. He doesn't have any focus."
     She said that sometimes Simers does not shower and said conversations with her husband are "difficult" because he has nothing to talk about now that he no longer writes columns.
     "Why wouldn't you get up and take a shower and get going?" she said. "But he doesn't have anything to get going to."

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