A contractor who solicited advertisements for Harvard Business Review in New York for four years sued the University earlier this month for age discrimination and breach of contract.

Arthur D. Bobrick sold ads as a contractor in the New York and California markets for the bimonthly publication until 1993. He alleges that he was terminated because of his age--he was 66 at the time--and replaced by a younger employee.

The University is denying the charges, arguing that Bobrick was terminated because of poor job performance, not age. In 1993, the review restructured its ad sales in New York, terminating Bobrick and another contractor and hiring four full-time employees instead.

The other contractor, James Quinn, sued the University, in 1993. That case is still pending.

The Harvard Business Review is a general-interest business magazine owned by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.

In a suit filed May 7 in Middlesex Superior Court, Bobrick claims that he was fired even though he had tripled ad sales from the California market and had met all "reasonable expectations" of him.

Bobrick had been hired in 1989 to solicit ads out of his office in New York. At the time he was terminated, he was being paid $12,000 a month as an advance on commissions.

"I performed brilliantly," Bobrick said in a phone interview. "I was the No. 1 salesperson out of 22 salespeople at the time."

Harvard disagrees.

"There's no basis for his claim of age discrimination," said University Attorney Allan A. Ryan Jr. "His termination was based on performance reasons and not age."

Harvard plans to file a formal response to the complaint within the week, Ryan said yesterday.

Job Performance or Age Bias?

At issue is the review's 1993 decision to terminate its two New York contractors and replace them with a four-person, full-time staff.

Bobrick's New York responsibilities were assumed by the review's new Manhattan office, and his California duties were taken over by a new contractor, Barbara Bella and Associates, based in San Francisco.

According to the complaint, Bobrick's contract was renewed three times since he was hired in 1989. His final contract, due to expire June 30, 1993, was terminated on March 12 of that year.

"The amount of advertising pages produced year after year, I produced more than anyone else, at one point as much as 20, 25 percent of the total," Bobrick said.

His attorney, Wendy A. Kaplan, said she has taped testimony from a former supervisor as to Bobrick's competence.

Peter Van Leight, the review's worldwide advertising sales director and Bobrick's supervisor at the time he was dismissed, declined to discuss the specifics of Bobrick's performance.

But Bobrick's claim that he tripled the review's California ad sales has been contradicted by at least one source.

According to Susan Sanford, the review's Los Angeles sales representative, the review had only one advertiser--Lexus, the auto maker--in the Los Angeles area when Barbara Bella and Associates replaced Bobrick as the contractor responsible for California and 10 Western states.

That account was only worth about $70,000 a year, compared with current sales of about $350,000 to $400,000 a year, Sanford said.

Bella, the firm's owner and the review's San Francisco ad sales representative, also said advertising had gone up since she won the contract with the review, but declined to give specific figures.

Bobrick said he "definitely" had more than one California account at the time of his departure, but refused to be more specific.

Also at issue is what Bobrick's supervisors told him when his contract was terminated.

"They didn't claim it was a performance issue here," said Kaplan, his lawyer. "They said, 'Oh, we're just having a new task force, that's all,'" referring to the new full-time New York staff.

Ryan said that as far as he knew, Bobrick was told that his departure was performance-related. Bobrick refused to comment.

The University attorney said the review's restructuring was business-related and that both Bobrick and Quinn were offered a chance to apply for positions with the new full-time New York staff. He also disputed the suit's assertion that Bobrick was replaced "with a substantially younger employee."

"When the Business Review went to employees rather than contractors, there were a number of people brought in, and some of them may have been younger than Mr. Bobrick; but it was not a causal relationship," Ryan said. "Age had nothing to do with it."

Sanford described ad sales as a volatile business, based largely on personal connections. Contractors are often not rehired.

"If someone is unhappy with someone's work, that's when they don't renew a contract," she said. "Also it's very unusual to have someone not be based in the territory they're representing. We're based here in Los Angeles; Barbara's based in San Francisco. That's how you build business."

"People lose their jobs all the time," she added.

Van Leight, the review's worldwide ad sales director, said he didn't even know Bobrick's age when he terminated the contract.

"As I recall, his contract had a cancellation clause which was exercised. That's all," he said.

He said both Quinn and Bobrick were given the chance to apply to work for the review full-time, but "neither of them made a presentation for a job," he said. "Essentially, they didn't progress in the interview process."

Bobrick refused to say whether he had applied for the full-time position.

Although Kaplan and Bobrick refused to comment on damages, court documents indicate Bobrick is seeking $450,000 for legal costs, emotional distress and harm done to his reputation and earning capacity. The suit also claims the University didn't pay Bobrick commissions after he was dismissed in March 1993, in violation of his contract.

The burden of proof is on Bobrick to show that the termination was not performance-based, but rather a case of age discrimination, said Mark D. Stern, another attorney representing Bobrick.

Stern said a trial date is expected to be set in March 1997, but Kaplan said such cases are frequently delayed for years.

The review, founded in 1922, has a circulation of about 250,000, according to Catharine Donovan, the review's advertising production manager. Ad revenues for the review, which is non-profit, totaled $6.5 million in 1995, Van Leight said