Record decision; record disappointment

Yesterday, my lawyers received the court's decision in my PDA case against King County Executive Rons Sims and King County. At the time, I was out of good email/fax contact and was unable to post this entry until today. (Thanks in the meantime to Stefan Sharkansky for posting the decision (it was there first) and his commentary and allowing for comments at www.SoundPolitics.com .) At this time I am unable to post the decision itself here at my blog, and my link to it is courtesy of Stefan Sharkansky and is at his www.SoundPolitics.com blog, where it is also available if you read Stefan's August 25 posting.

The total award, combined with the $114,000 awarded in 2001, must certainly be a record amount ever awarded for such a case in the United States, if not the world. Nevertheless, the decision is extremely disappointing and not good for citizens who follow me. As best as I can tell, I incurred a record amount in legal fees to get King County to disgorge the documents they withheld for four years, during which time they denied that they even existed.

The penalty award was $15 per day. King County asked for $10. I asked for $90, considering the findings of "egregious" misconduct and "gross negligence".

The conduct in this case was very bad - "gross negligence". It is my understanding that "gross negligence", in the law, is very serious misconduct - just one step down from intentional withholding. To have conduct as bad as was involved in this case, that went on for so long, that involved so great a public project involving so much money authorized by an election without full disclosure of the studies that King County Executive Ron Sims was (mis)quoting in 1997 to recommend a "For" vote in the June, 1997 special election over the Paul Allen football stadium, with evidence now that several studies were (and again in my opinion), "rigged", and to end up with fines of only $15 per day in the $5 to $100 range is not good.

This outcome simply doesn't yield enough of a penalty to result in deterrance when it comes 8 years after the behavior. It's also not enough for any competent attorney who has other hourly clients to take on a contingent fee basis. And the reality is that most citizens do not have the ability and/or willingness to pay an attorney's monthly billings for, potentially, eight years. And government knows this, so it's all the more reason to continue to withhold documents from requestors.

All in all, another sad day for our democracy, for transparency in government, etc.

You will note that most of my legal costs for the two successful appeals were awarded. However, this does not begin to make up for the fact that, back in 2001, the first trial judge (she later retired, and a different judge handled the current remand) awarded only approximately half my first $150,000 in legal expenses ($89,000 awarded versus $150,000 incurred).

Bottom line at this point: after 8 years, an estimated 4000 hours of my own time, and still without all the smoking gun documents that I have evidence must exist (including reproduction shop records billing King County for 54 sets of copies of a 112 page report King County has never produced to me), the total recovery is approximately $380K, versus $330K just for my legal costs. This outcome means most people will never get a lawyer to take such a case without being paid hourly, as there just isn't enough potential for penalties to make a contingent fee arrangement worthwhile.

Again , see www.SoundPolitics.com for Stefan's August 25 entry: "Public Non-Disclosure", and the many comments there. And to access the six page opinion.

And thanks to all of you who have continue to support me.

Stay tuned for more updates. Either side has 30 days to appeal. It may not be over yet.

Armen Yousoufian