U.S. District Judge John O'Meara wrote that the plaintiffs - including former Mayor Coleman Young and City Council President Maryann Mahaffey - had not shown they were injured by the publication of the joint edition.
"The alternative to publishing a joint daily edition during the first two months of the strike might well have been to not publish a newspaper at all - hardly a victory for 'product choice,"' O'Meara said in the ruling, dated March 27.
Under a joint operating agreement implemented in 1989, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News published separate newspapers Monday through Friday and combined editions on weekends and holidays. During staff shortages in the first nine weeks of the strike that began in July 1995, they published a combined daily edition.
They resumed separate weekday editions on Sept. 18, 1995, and the lawsuit was filed in November 1995.
Detroit Newspapers Inc., which runs business and production operations for the News and Free Press, has said it informed the Justice Department in 1992 of its plans to publish joint editions in the event of a strike. The plaintiffs said the amendment needed to be approved again by the federal government.
But O'Meara said the company did not have to seek full approval every time an amendment to the agreement was made.
The News is owned by Gannett Co. Inc. and the Free Press by Knight-Ridder Inc.
Donald Baker, a Washington D.C.-based attorney who is representing the plaintiffs, said no decision had been made yesterday whether to appeal.
In another development, the regional director of National Labor Relations Board has made his recommendation on whether to seek a federal court injunction to immediately restore jobs for all non-fired union newspaper workers who want them.
But the regional director, William Schaub, wouldn't say yesterday what his recommendation is. He and NLRB officials in Washington said it's board policy to keep preliminary recommendations on injunctions secret.
Schaub sent the recommendation Tuesday to NLRB general counsel Fred Feinstein. Ellen Farrell, an assistant general counsel at the NLRB, said it likely will take weeks for Feinstein to approve or reject Schaub's recommendation. The three-member NLRB would then have final say on the matter, and the board also could take weeks to deliberate, Farrell said.
The six formerly striking locals on Feb. 21 asked Schaub to seek an injunction. The request came two days after officials with the News, the Free Press and Detroit Newspapers Inc. accepted the workers' unconditional offer to return to work.
The unions contend that the newspapers in effect rejected their offer because of the newspapers' vow to retain their 1,200 replacement workers, thus making few jobs immediately available for returning strikers.
In another matter before the NLRB, Schaub said that by Monday he hopes to settle a complaint against the unions for alleged secondary boycotts.
Schaub said if he fails to reach a new settlement by Monday, he will seek a federal court injunction to prevent the unions from engaging in such boycotts.
The complaint stems from accusations that the unions disrupted shopping last fall at five Detroit-area merchants that advertise with the News and Free Press.
The NLRB, claiming the unions blocked parking lots with cars and interfered with customers making purchases, said such secondary boycotts were illegal.
The NLRB on March 14 rejected an earlier settlement proposed by Schaub, saying the unions' announcement that they had done nothing illegal and would continue boycott activities undermined the agreement.
Union officials have continued advertising and circulation boycotts as well as picketing to protest what they term a lockout. Newspaper officials said the employees are not being locked out.
Eight maintenance unit workers for Detroit Newspapers were the first to return under the back-to-work agreement when they went back to their jobs March 24.