Top Wash. Court Says Lawyer Billing Records May Be Public in Murder Case, Awards Fees
A Washington newspaper has won a round in a costly court battle to force Yakima County officials and/or a local state court to make public the billing records for court-appointed counsel in a now-concluded capital murder case.
However, the battle isn’t yet over. The Washington Supreme Court has remanded much of the case to the trial court for new determinations in accord with its opinion today, the Yakima Herald-Republic reports.
Meanwhile, its opinion today grants the newspaper, which is the plaintiff in the case, its attorney fees and costs for having to pursue litigation in an attempt to access the records.
The case is complex, with claims of attorney work-product privilege and a court protective order complicating the county’s decision-making about whether the billing documents sought were public under either or both of two state open-records statutes that might apply.
But the burden was on the county, by statute, to “identify a specific exemption and provide an explanation of how it applies to the individual agency record,” the supreme court writes. “Instead of identifying records, the county shifted the burden to the newspaper, requiring the paper to file a court action.”
Hence, it awarded the newspaper unspecified “costs and reasonable attorney fees” for pursuing the case. Statutory daily penalties of up to $100 for failing to provide access to records, however, were denied as premature.
