Yousoufian v. Office of Ron Sims, __ Wn.2d __, __ P.3d __ (March 25, 2010), is the fifth appellate court decision in a public records dispute that began with a request for records related to a proposed new sports stadium in 1997. The Washington Supreme Court recalled the mandate it had already issued following its 2009 opinion, 165 Wn.2d 439, 200 P.3d 232 (Jan. 15, 2009), and now modifies and affirms the Court of Appeals decision found at 137 Wn.App. 69, 151 P.3d 243 (2007). The final issue was the amount of daily penalties a trial court should award for King County’s violations of the Public Records Act, ch. 42.56 RCW. In this 5-4 opinion, the majority laid out a set of seven nonexclusive “mitigating factors” and nine nonexclusive “aggravating factors” for trial court consideration in determining the appropriate daily penalty from the mandatory statutory range of $5-$100. RCW 42.56.550. The chief considerations are the compliance effort by the agency and the impact of the agency’s action—with the higher penalties reserved for those cases in which some form of “sting” appears necessary to force the agency to pay attention to its disclosure obligations.
This round of appeals began when the trial court decided the daily penalty should be $15. The appellate court reversed, and remanded for a higher daily penalty determination by the trial court, whose discretion is virtually unlimited by statute. The Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals, but with a twist. In a highly unusual decision criticized by the dissent, the majority declined to issue yet another mandate to the trial court, but instead determined the daily penalty itself -- $45 per day. The resulting penalty -- $371,000.00 -‑ is the highest PRA judgment on record in this State. As the dissent notes, it is not readily apparent how the Supreme Court applied its factors to come up with the $45 daily penalty. While the majority’s goal was to guide trial courts and thus limit the number of PRA appeals, it remains to be seen whether the nonexclusive 16-factor approach will achieve that end.
