Fisher also said the agreements were meant to ensure the newspaper's holding company would never be sold to a third party, and that TCI wanted no change in the NAC or the joint operating agreement.

But Fisher left TCI in 1995, two years before the sale of the newspaper was completed. He said, however, that he "continued to work after that date as a consultant to (Malone)."

Malone's and Fisher's affidavits were part of a flurry of legal filings Tuesday and Wednesday in the case.

Just days before a scheduled hearing in federal court, the owners, former owners and managers of the Salt Lake Tribune hurled accusations at one another.

The Tribune managers originally filed their lawsuit in December, attempting to keep AT&T from selling the holding company of the newspaper to MediaNews.

U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell denied the managers' request for a preliminary injunction to stop the sale, and the transaction was completed.

But the managers still contend that MediaNews and AT&T have conspired to deprive them of their right to control the newspaper and buy it back in the summer of 2002.

Shortly after buying the Tribune, MediaNews President Dean Singleton removed Tribune executives Dominic Welch and Randy Frisch from the NAC board and agreed to the appointment of Joseph Zerbey, the president of a newspaper company in Pennsylvania, as NAC president, a position Welch had held.

A hearing for another preliminary injunction is slated for Monday morning. Tribune managers are asking Judge Campbell to order MediaNews to make no changes in the NAC.

Looming as a prominent issue in the case is the tax-free treatment given to the original transaction between the Tribune managers and TCI.

MediaNews attorneys say that Malone's new statements make clear a fundamental dilemma:

"The parties' sophisticated tax counsel carefully structured a transaction that accomplished the tax-free transfer of. . . stock, but the transaction had to take a certain form to achieve that goal, which necessarily limited what rights (the Tribune managers were) able to obtain," court documents stated.

MediaNews reasons that if the transaction contained any limitations on a new owners' economic benefits of ownership, "the entire transaction could well be deemed a sham and disqualified from tax-free treatment."

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E-MAIL: mtitze@desnews.com