Sep 6, 2006: $55 a day PDA fine for Olympian newspaper

The article below is about a Public Disclosure Act case decision in Washington State's Clark County Superior Court awarding daily fines at $55 a day. It just appeared in today's Olympian newspaper. This case has been going on for a few months and there had been earlier articles about the paper's efforts to get these documents and the city's conduct. Compare this to the $15 a day award I've obtained so far in my case, after 9 years of litigation, and where the withholding went on for 4 years, during which time King County's lawyers repeatedly claimed the documents I sought didn't even exist! The over 200 documents finally produced revealed, as far as I am concerned, that the public was intentionally deceived by slanted studies to justify the recommendation that we spend hundreds of millions of public dollars to subsidize sports stadiums. Do the relative amounts of the daily awards make any sense to you? This demonstrates how much the awards vary among trial judges, with very little guidance still, to this day, from the higher courts, which is what my appeals asked for them to provide.

The decision goes downhill from there for the paper - not recovering their full legal fees or costs... Personally speaking, been there, done that, appealed... and still am - see my recent post on the status of my still ongoing case and the upcoming September 20 oral argument in the Court of Appeals. It's at:

http://yousoufian.blogspot.com/2006/09/september-20-next-court-date-in-still.html

Armen Yousoufian



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Ridgefield ordered to pay $24,000 in records case

Wednesday, September 6, 2006
By STEPHANIE RICE, Columbian staff writer Advertisement


The city of Ridgefield has been ordered to pay The Columbian $24,030 in fees and fines to end a dispute over public records.

The newspaper successfully sued June 2 to get documents related to Ridgefield's ongoing troubles in city hall and the police department.

In a seven-page order signed Friday, Superior Court Judge Roger Bennett said the newspaper will be reimbursed $22,455 for legal fees and $200 for the cost of filing the lawsuit. He also penalized Ridgefield $1,375 for withholding the documents, calculated at $55 a day for the 25 days the city sat on the newspaper's request.

Bennett did not give the newspaper everything it wanted, however.

After all the checks have been written, the legal battle will have cost The Columbian more than an additional $10,000.

Lou Brancaccio, editor of The Columbian, said Tuesday that while he has no plans at this time to appeal Bennett's decision, it falls short of fulfilling the idea that it shouldn't cost to make the government honest.

"The court system is supposed to make the aggrieved party whole," said Brancaccio. "And this does not make us whole."

Ridgefield's attorney, Mike Wynne, called the ruling "very fair and reasonable."

Bennett had a lot of latitude in deciding how much money the newspaper should receive.

He rejected the hourly rate of $315 charged by The Columbian's attorney, Michele Earl-Hubbard of Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle.

Instead, Bennett used the rate of $225 to calculate legal fees. That's a top hourly rate for a Clark County attorney, Bennett wrote, and it's not Ridgefield's fault the newspaper uses an attorney from Seattle.

Rowland Thompson, executive director for Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, said that's the wrong way to look at the situation.

Had the newspaper hired locally, Thompson said, the legal bill would have been higher because the attorney would not have had Earl-Hubbard's expertise and would have spent more time on the case than the 99.8 hours she billed the newspaper.

Earl-Hubbard, one of about a dozen experts on public records in Washington, works all over the state.

The city, Thompson noted, spent far more on its own legal fees because their attorneys had to spend more time researching the issues.

Bennett also turned down the newspaper's request for actual costs, such as messenger services and Earl-Hubbard's travel expenses, except the $200 filing fee.

As for the penalty, Bennett could have assessed the daily fee at any rate between $5 and $100. The newspaper asked for the maximum as an incentive to public agencies to comply with requests for public records.

The $1,375 will be donated to a Ridgefield community organization, Brancaccio said, but details have not been worked out.

The records were related to Ridgefield Police Officer Carl Mealing, who's been fired; Ridgefield City Manager George Fox, who's on paid leave; and a city investigation into Mealing and Fox conducted by two Kirkland police officers.

The city claimed the records fell under an exemption in the Public Records Act.

Bennett disagreed, but said it wasn't as clear-cut as The Columbian argued.

"Reasonable minds could differ," Bennett wrote.

"While the City did not prevail, certainly the City's arguments were not frivolous."

Stephanie Rice covers the courts. She can be reached at 360-759-8004 or stephanie.rice@columbian.com.