Opinion ID: 2192876
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Nicaragua Incident June 1979

Text: The next major event in this employment relationship is a dispute over a proposed trip by Hubbard to cover the civil war in Nicaragua. In June 1979, Macchini called Hubbard to ask if he wanted to volunteer to cover this civil war, and Hubbard accepted. Hubbard was instructed to meet another UPI picture manager who had volunteered for the assignment, Alex Persons, in Miami, Florida, and to leave for Nicaragua from Miami. On the trip to Florida, Hubbard read a magazine article about the dangers to newsmen in Nicaragua that renewed his prior concerns regarding his safety on this assignment. When Hubbard arrived in Miami later in the evening of June 27, 1979, to meet with Persons, Persons asked him to change his money into smaller denominations in order to pay off people with cigarettes, booze and money to ease their way through checkpoints as they travelled across the country. Hubbard testified that he thought taking liquor, cigarettes and money into a war-torn country for use as gratuities was insane and unnecessarily dangerous, as well as a breach of professional ethics. Persons testified that such occasional use of gratuities was common among American journalists in Nicaragua, and that he did not consider it improper in any way. At this point Hubbard was quite apprehensive about leaving for Nicaragua. In an effort to make final arrangements and to get more current information regarding the situation on the scene, Persons managed to get Lou Garcia on a long distance phone line. Garcia was in Nicaragua already; Hubbard and Persons were to go in and replace him and another UPI journalist. Hubbard spoke to Garcia, who said it's just like covering the riots in Detroit, and that it's no problem at all. Hubbard had never met Lou Garcia, and he wondered how Garcia could know that he, Hubbard, had covered the Detroit riot years before. After this conversation, Hubbard was very concerned that he was being set up by UPI. On cross examination he testified that he felt it was possible that UPI was taking him to Nicaragua as a pretext so that they could have him killed. Despite these very serious reservations, Hubbard continued to vacillate and it was not until 3 a.m. that he definitely decided not to go. Persons wanted Hubbard to call Macchini at that time, but Hubbard decided to wait until a more decent hour. Persons then called to inform Macchini of Hubbard's decision. When Hubbard returned Macchini's phone messages around 8 a.m., Macchini told him he should have done his homework and made his decision not to go while still in Minneapolis. Lyon did not know that Hubbard had been asked, or had volunteered, to go to Nicaragua. When informed by Macchini of Hubbard's decision and of the circumstances in which it was made, Lyon was quite upset. Lyon testified that he was upset at the expense incurred in sending Hubbard to Miami, and that he was further upset because Hubbard was supposed to relieve a UPI journalist who was already in Nicaragua, and who had to remain there when Hubbard didn't go. Lyon wrote Hubbard on July 9 stating that he had thought seriously about discharging Hubbard, and decided not to only because it was a dangerous, voluntary assignment. Lyon commented, however, that the indecisiveness Hubbard displayed showed why he was not a good manager, and suggested that Hubbard look for a job elsewhere, under someone's supervision. Hubbard wrote in reply that he found Lyon's suggestion of where he should be employed interesting, but that he preferred to stay on UPI's payroll. Hubbard explained that his decision not to proceed to Nicaragua was based upon extenuating circumstances. At this point, Lyon and Hubbard each wrote a letter to the other, dated August 2, and these letters apparently crossed in the mails. In his letter, Lyon asked Hubbard to spell out these extenuating circumstances. In his letter, Hubbard set forth in detail the progression of events which led him to change his mind about the assignment. Lyon didn't believe Hubbard, and wrote the following note in response: Your August 2d letter to me makes interesting reading. I'm going to tell you what I think really happened: I think you chickened out. Hubbard testified that he was very upset when he received Lyon's letter at work:    [S]aying I chickened out is totally erroneous and totally unfair, and it hurt me; it hurt me deeply, and it made me sick. After the Nicaragua incident, Lyon was committed to securing Hubbard's resignation. On August 10, 1979, in response to inquiry from another management official about what to do with Hubbard, Lyon wrote that I agree with you wholeheartedly that we are going to have to get rid of Jim Hubbard   . In that letter, Lyon stated that: I don't think our current case for his dismissal is strong enough to hold up in an arbitration, and the dismissal, when it comes, will certainly go to arbitration. Lyon thought the letters from Macchini to Hubbard earlier in the year were too mild, and he suggested that Macchini cooperate with State Editor Richard McFarland (a recovering alcoholic who had gone through treatment in 1975) to build a record to support Hubbard's dismissal. Lyon concluded: All of this has got to be done in writing, and its all got to be made a part of the file. If we do it properly, we can be rid of Hubbard within a couple of months, and more importantly, we will be able to make the dismissal stick. But frankly, I do not want to go into arbitration with what we have in the record now.