Washington State Supreme Court Withdraws Yousoufian Opinion
Update 7/5
What does this mean for other PRA cases? If you have a case at the penalty stage, I'd probably seek a stay because unless the Court adopts the identical test, if you do it now you'll just have to do it again later.
Original Post
The Washington State Supreme Court has withdrawn its January Opinion in the long-running Yousoufian v. Office of Ron Sims case. In that Opinion, the Supreme Court had ruled that the $124,000 Public Records Act penalty award against King County was too small. The Opinion adopted 16 factors trial courts should use to set penalty amounts. For more details on the Opinion, see this MRSC article.
King County had moved to have the Opinion withdrawn after it was revealed that the Opinion author, Justice Richard Sanders, had a pending appeal in a Public Records Act case, where he was relying on his Yousoufian Opinion to argue that his judgment against the State should be increased. In light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court holding in Caperton v. Massey that a West Virginia Supreme Court Justice's decision not to recuse himself violated due process, this result is not surprising.
Here is an article in the Seattle Times on the Supreme Court's ruling. Here is a post on the Supreme Court Blog about the order.
