Armen Yousoufian's Blog

After 30 years in business/investment real estate, I added "citizen activist" to my resume in 1997 when I requested sports stadium documents of King County Executive Ron Sims. After being "stonewalled", I sued, winning more at every stage, up to the state Supreme Court. Documents disgorged by Sims (after 4 years denying they existed!) revealed rigged studies. Sims misled the public on the stadiums. Other issues found me (e.g. Critical Areas Ordinance). Google “Armen Yousoufian” for more.

About Me

Name:
Location: Vashon, Washington, United States

I was born and raised in New York City. I took classical violin lessons for 10 years and studied astronomy. I built telescopes, grinding the mirrors from scratch. I was a nerd! I considered a career in classical violin but chose astrophysics. I majored in Physics at Rutgers University for 2 years, then switched and graduated in mechanical engineering. I moved to Seattle in 1969 to work on missiles for Boeing, got an MBA from Seattle University, and became a business and real estate entrepreneur for over 30 years. In 1997 I became involved in open government activism when I asked King County Executive Ron Sims for sports stadium documents. I was stonewalled. I sued under the Open Records, or Public Disclosure, Act. I won the case in King County Superior Court, but still didn’t get all the documents, nor recovered my legal fees, which the law said I was entitled to be reimbursed. I appealed and won more in the Court of Appeals and the court of public opinion. But I still didn’t get all the documents! I appealed again and won yet more in the Washington State Supreme Court. But I still don’t have all the documents! While that fight goes on I have become involved in new issues.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

My PDA case in today's Seattle Weekly

My case makes another article in the Seattle Weekly!

The latest goings-on in my long-running Public Disclosure Act case against Ron Sims and King County are the focus of yet another article in this week's Seattle Weekly. See:

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0531/050803_news_records.php

(Note: August 7, 2005 update to the below: as of no later than yesterday, the "on-line"version of the article has had the below item corrected. The original print version, for those who read it, contains the original error.)

There is one fact error in the article. I wasn't awarded "over $100,000" for legal expenses in 2001 at the first trial. Rather, it was approximately $89,000, versus approximately $150,000 in legal costs incurred by then. The total initial award was approximately $114,000, incuding the legal cost award plus $25,000 in penalties - resulting in the total award, with penalties, still being $36,000 short of the legal expenses alone. (Details are in the 31 page trial court's opinion, available at www.ArmenYousoufian.com )

In other words, I had supposedly won my lawsuit against Ron Sims and King County under a law that says that if I prevail, I am to be awarded my legal costs. But even after adding in $25,000 in penalties, the award was $36,000 short of the legal costs alone! The trial judge nearly cut the legal costs incurred in half! (Details of how she did that are in the 31 page opinion mentioned above.)

That bad outcome, while supposedly winning the case (who would risk pursuing a PDA violation case like mine in the future if that's the prospect of what you'd be looking forward to?), was one of several reasons I appealed the case. Not just for my own sake, but for future document requestors who would otherwise have a huge disincentive or burden against suing to get documents that were illegally withheld.

(All this assumes my legal costs incurred were reasonable, which we felt they were considering what we had to deal with in King County's conduct that had caused so much legal effort to have been expended to finally get production of documents whose very existence had been denied for four years!)

Armen Yousoufian

posted by Armen Yousoufian | 9:39 AM

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