On his blog, McHenry County, Illinois-resident Cal Skinner Jr. alleged that Shaw’s largest newspaper, The Northwest Herald, received a multimillion dollar-loan from McHenry County government at sub-market rates to prevent it from moving outside the county. The company also challenges a comment that the loan was made “to put the paper in the back pocket of the Republican Party.”

The lawsuit says Shaw never received a loan from any public body and denies ever considering moving the Northwest Herald from McHenry County.

Over at the Newton Independent (no affiliation with this site), former Newton Daily News Editor Peter Hussmann points out that Shaw Newspapers “knows a little about defamatory lawsuits.”

A few years back, an Illinois judge and former Chicago Bears football player won a $7 million judgment against Shaw and the Kane County Chronicle, another of its suburban Chicago newspapers, over a column that ran in the paper. The judgment was subsequently reduced to $4 million. You can read about that issue here.

Shaw Newspapers is asking a judge to award the company at least $50,000 in each of three counts alleging defamation, false light and commercial disparagement.