re: Seattle pastor claims newspaper canceled church's Easter service ad after CEO objected

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OK, so we don't really know if the church has anything to stand on.

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This is a good place to start

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Whatever the CEO did, according to his own employees as quoted in the OP, was unprecedented in the newspaper's existence.

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No one from the newspaper is claiming that there was no contract, or that the contract allowed for it to be violated based on the personal views of the CEO.

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The ad's original messaging mentioning "Hell" and "revival" was altered after it was rejected by the paper, but a modified version of the ad was finally accepted and paid for on March 19, the emails reportedly showed.

However, Johnson said the contract was canceled the following day, just two days before the ad was to be published.

He claimed the marketing team told him that "the owner [Frank Blethen] personally stepped in today and canceled your ad." He was told the prominent religious ad would hurt the company's reputation.

"They said, ‘You know, it didn’t really fit with the ethic of the paper.’ However, the marketing team told me in all of their years of doing advertising for The Seattle Times, this has never once happened, where the owner and the CEO personally stepped in at the last minute to cancel a signed contract," Johnson told Rantz.

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OK, so we don't really know if the church has anything to stand on.

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This is true, without a copy of the contract to review its terms we don’t know the basis of the Church’s cause of action or if there are terms allowing the newspaper to cancel without cause.

It’s been stated the Church’s particular request was met with a promise to run the ad at dates and times specific and that the newspaper took the church’s payment. Offer. Acceptance. Payment. Sounds like a solid contract. What’s missing is the newspaper’s performance.

Seems pretty solid legs to carry a suit forward unless there’s language in the contract relieving the newspaper of its obligations to run the ad.

That the plaintiff is a Christian church should have no bearing insofar as I can see.

Presumably, at a minimum, the church should get its 18k back with some small interest paid covering the days or months it was in the newspaper’s coffers.

Because they’re a church, no judge in that neck of the woods will likely give them something approximating loss of anticipated profit or return on investment because it’s dealing with seats in the pews and souls getting saved. How can a dollar value be placed on those?

The stickler is no judge up there is likely to award deserved punitive damages because they’re a Christian church thereby compounding the flagrant discrimination already evident from the facts that have been reported.