Lawsuits Target Lewis County Law Library Records

Lewis County is fighting two lawsuits that accuse staff of refusing to fill nearly 70 public records requests regarding the county’s Law Library. 

The first lawsuit, filed Sept. 30, 2016, by Brian Cortland, argues that Lewis County staff denied or did not respond to 16 records requests asking for information on the law library, and that county staff told him the library did not fall under requirements of the Public Records Act. 

Thurston County Judge Christopher Lanese rejected that argument in June, and issued an order in favor of all of Cortland’s arguments. He ordered the county to fill all of Cortland’s requests outlined in the complaint, and to pay penalties and attorney fees set to be determined at a hearing this November. 

Cortland filed a second lawsuit a month later, on July 27, naming an additional 53 records requests on the law library denied by Lewis County.

“Lewis County knowingly and intentionally shielded records from the Public Records Act by either dissolving or allowing to be dissolved (the) Lewis County Law Library Board … in contravention of an applicable statute and then (continued) the work of the Law Library Board under the auspices of a separate governmental body,” the 2017 lawsuit states.

In addition to the two PRA complaints, Cortland and his attorney, Joseph Thomas, of Renton, have also filed a writ of mandamus asking a judge to order Lewis County to reinstate its law library board, which was disbanded in 2010.

Cortland is well known in Lewis County government for filing dozens of records requests in a sitting, according to the Board of Lewis County Commissioners.

During a commissioners meeting on Monday, the board expressed concerns on the amount of requests that have been filed by certain individuals, stating they feel the county is being specifically targeted.

“To me, it’s gone beyond someone wanting to know about government, wanting to do some research or asking questions about our process, but it’s inundating the system,” Commissioner Edna Fund said, adding the requests have cost the county an estimated $500,000 this year. “I feel like Lewis County is a target at this point.” 

Commissioner Gary Stamper said the process has been frustrating, especially from a budget standpoint. The county recently hired a public disclosure manager and a deputy prosecuting attorney to deal with the number of requests it receives.

“I do think that Lewis County has become somewhat of a target from some individuals and that’s unfortunate because it’s costing taxpayers a lot of money,” he said. 

Two new public records laws recently came into effect that will allow the county to charge for documents it produces, but the laws will not offset the county’s costs, commissioners said.

According to Commissioner Bobby Jackson, the numerous requests have become an unreasonable distraction. 

“There is a fatal flaw with our public disclosure system,” he said. “It’s created a cottage industry to find any and every reason they can to sue entities for the sake of a paycheck.”

One of the issues cited at an earlier update with commissioners is that many of the requests that are fulfilled by the individuals are not even opened once they have been released through GovQA, an online platform that helps municipalities manage records requests. 

Cortland and Brian Green both have active lawsuits pending against Lewis County.

The pair settled a lawsuit with the county earlier this month in which they were both listed as plaintiffs, arguing that the commissioners met on a number of occasions in the first few months of 2017 without giving proper notice of the meetings under the state Open Public Meetings Act. 

Lewis County has agreed to pay Cortland and Green $20,000 plus attorney fees in that case. 

Cortland’s first lawsuit on the topic of the law library was filed Sept. 30, 2016. 

In that complaint, Cortland stated that, on Dec. 9, 2015, he submitted 16 requests for public records, in two emails, to Lewis County. 

The requests were for documents regarding the contents of the law library, its operation and its administration. 

Lewis County Chief Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Glenn Carter responded to Cortland’s requests, saying Law Library records are maintained by Lewis County Superior Court, and noted that superior courts do not fall under the authority of the Public Records Act. 

Carter’s response to Cortland’s lawsuit makes a similar argument.

“This is not a Public Records Act (PRA) case,” he wrote. “There is no Law Library Board and it cannot be a party to this case.”

Carter noted the board ceased to function as an independent entity in 2010, and that the library was administered officially by Washington Superior Court since then. 

“Plaintiff never submitted a request to Lewis County,” Carter’s response to the lawsuit states. “His sole request was to the Law Library Board, an entity that does not exist.”

RCW 27.24.020 requires counties with population of more than 8,000 and less than 300,000 to have a board of law library trustees consisting of five members including the chair of the county legislative authority, a superior court judge and three members of the county bar association. 

On June 23, Judge Lanese issued a formal order of merit in the case, ruling that the law library in Lewis County does function, even if it has no board as required by state law, and that it does fall under requirements of the PRA. 

“We’re very happy about the win, about the judgment against Lewis County,” Thomas said.

Lewis County filed a motion June 30 asking the judge to reconsider several parts of his ruling, to instead rule against Cortland that the county law library does not fall under the PRA and that Lewis County disbanded the Law Library Board for purposes of efficiency, rather than to hide records, as was suggested in Cortland’s suits and in the final order. 

On Aug. 3, Judge Lanese ruled against the county again, except to concede that the court did “not find that any Lewis County entity ceased the functioning of the Lewis County Law Library Board for the purpose of shielding records from the Public Records Act.”

Cortland’s second lawsuit, filed on July 27, again accuses the county of withholding records he requested related to the law library. 

“We filed the first lawsuit because this is a complicated area of the law which is unclear,” Thomas said. “Since the first 16 were filed on the same day with two different emails … we decided to bring the first 16 as a test lawsuit.”

After the December 2015 records requests, but before the 2016 lawsuit, Cortland filed a further 53 requests with the county regarding the law library.

Those requests were filed between August 2016 and September 2016. 

The new lawsuit alleges that the county filled none of those requests, for the same argument given on the December 2015 requests — that the law library doesn’t fall under the PRA. 

“The issue is the same in both cases,” Cortland’s newest suit claims. “In this case, Mr. Cortland is asking this Court to find a violation of the Public Records Act because neither the Lewis County Law Library Board nor Lewis County even responded under the Public Records Act.”  

The 2017 lawsuit cites the judge’s decision in the previous case.