Wash. Justice Awarded Documents, Fees in Public Records Case
Justice Richard Sanders is entitled to four documents that were improperly withheld in his public records lawsuit against the state, the Washington Supreme Court held Thursday.
Sanders is also entitled to the additional legal fees he incurred during his appeal of a trial court decision that found more than 100 of the documents he was seeking were exempt from the state’s public disclosure law, the Associated Press reported Thursday.
Sanders sued the state in 2005 after he was admonished for talking with residents of the state’s center for violent sexual predators while some residents had pending court cases. He is seeking all documents related to the visit, including all e-mails among the state’s attorneys.
The state’s high court, in its unanimous ruling Thursday, said that most of the more than 100 exempted documents Sanders was seeking were properly withheld under the state’s public disclosure law. It also awarded him a penalty based on the number of documents it said should have been released, but rejected his request for an increase in the penalty rate against the state. The court had set the penalty at $8 per document per day.
The court also upheld the lower court’s ruling that the state attorney general’s office violated the state’s public records act by not adequately explaining to Sanders why it exempted some of the documents he was seeking.
Paul Lawrence, Sanders’ attorney, said he feared that by limiting the fee awards and minimizing the penalty, the court’s decision will serve as a “disincentive” to people who want to pursue public records act claims.
A spokesman for the state attorney general’s office said the low penalty award attests to the office’s “good faith and overall compliance” with the public records act.
The court last year upheld an appellate decison that denied reimbursement for Sanders’ legal defense fees because he was acting outside the scope of his judicial employment when he visited the state prison and talked with inmates with pending court cases.
