Tuesday, August 25, 2015 11:30 am

PORTLAND, Maine (From the Bangor Daily News) -- Since merging with NewPage, Verso Paper Corp. has announced layoffs of 610 people, including 300 at its Jay mill. Meanwhile, the mill in Rumford that Verso sold to Catalyst Paper laid off 50 workers.

Attorneys representing those laid-off or soon-to-be-laid-off workers made their case before a federal judge Monday afternoon that the closures are the result of Verso wielding too much influence in the North American market for coated paper and seeking to earn higher prices for their coated paper after cutting the supply.

The court battle playing out in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., is the extension of a fight over the closure of Verso's mill in Bucksport, which was challenged in federal court in Maine. The International Aerospace and Machinists Union, representing about 58 former employees in Bucksport, lost its bid in January for an injunction to stop the mill from being sold to a scrap metal dealer.

Now, the union is asking U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to reject or modify the terms of a settlement that antitrust regulators reached to allow Verso to buy its larger competitor NewPage.

While the fate of the Bucksport mill is sealed, the union is asking the court to seek further concessions from Verso as a condition of the already completed acquisition of NewPage. The settlement required NewPage to sell its mills in Rumford and Biron, Wisconsin, to the Canadian Catalyst Paper Corp. before being acquired by Verso.

Verso has argued its closures come in response to declining demand in North America for coated paper. From 2001 to 2014, closures at Verso and NewPage mills accounted for almost half of the drop in coated paper production capacity in North America, according to monthly market updates the company provided in court testimony.