A Philadelphia judge has declined to dismiss a defamation lawsuit that retired Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Stu Bykofsky filed against the paper and fellow columnist Inga Saffron over comments she made during his retirement party last year.

The suit stems from comments Saffron, a Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture columnist, made about a 2011 column Bykofsky wrote, which she described as "the infamous column about his taste for child prostitutes in Thailand." After media outlets both locally and nationally reported on the comments, which were recorded, Bykofsky sued Saffron and the paper in March, alleging not only defamation, but also false light invasion of privacy.