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Division II of the Washington Court of Appeals has upheld a trial court’s decision to group documents into two categories, thereby lowering the penalties against the Washington Dept. of Labor and Industries (L&I) from over to $500,000 to approximately $30,000. Bricker v. Washington State Department of Labor & Industries, __ Wn.App. __, 2011 WL 4357760 (September 20, 2011).

Ken Bricker is a former contractor who owned a home at which he did his own electrical work. An L&I inspector issued a citation related to the work. Bricker appealed, and sent a letter to the inspector, in which the Public Records Act (PRA) was not mentioned, asking for “a copy of all permits issued and copies of inspections and correction requests by all inspectors at that residence.” The L&I inspector filed the letter, assuming that the records would be made available during the contested hearing over the citation.

Bricker then made several attempts to obtain the records, including telephone calls to L&I personnel who did not recall the calls. It turned out that there were somewhere between 3 and 16 responsive records. Bricker both overturned the citation and won the PRA trial where he was originally awarded penalties totaling over $500,000.00. But the trial court later reconsidered, and broke the documents into two groups, the original 16 records and 3 other records that were duplicates, except for signatures. The trial court awarded $90/day for the first group and $15/day for the second group, stating that the PRA was about accountability, but absent bad faith, the PRA is not meant as compensation for damages.

Bricker appealed the trial court’s reconsideration, which changed the award from a per-document per-day award to a per-group per-day award, reducing the award to just under $30,000.00 plus attorney fees. L&I cross-appealed the high-end award, claiming out that, absent bad faith and with less culpability that in a prior case in which a $45/day penalty was found appropriate, the high end range (the maximum penalty is $100 per day) was an abuse of discretion.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court on both issues.. With respect to the L&I claim that the high per day penalty was error, because there was no bad faith, the Court of Appeals noted that Bricker’s request for documents was clear, the agency made no response even after Bricker followed up on his request, and the L&I inspector had received no PRA training and made no inquiries about how to handle Bricker’s request for information.

On the other hand, in response to Bricker’s appeal, the Court held that it is not an abuse of discretion for a trial court to decline to award penalties for each document per day. Pointing out that other courts, including Yousoufian, had upheld awards based on categories of related documents, this Court approved the trial court’s effort to assess different penalties for different groups of documents, to which (as a group) different Yousoufian factors applied.

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A recent Court of Appeals decision may mark the end of a decade-long saga involving a Washington county’s violation of the Washington Public Records Act (PRA). Armen Yousoufian had found earlier success with the courts and had been awarded $371,340 for King County’s failure to comply with the PRA. See Yousoufian v. Office of Ron Sims, et al., 168 Wn.2d 444, 229 P.3d 735 (2010). The most recent decision in the long line of Yousoufian decisions found that the County was responsible for post-judgment interest, retroactive to the date of the initial judgment against the County in August 2005.

The decision by the Court of Appeals is not published, and therefore is not binding precedent. However, it does provide legal framework for similar claims arising out of a PRA judgment. In addition, the Court awarded further attorney fees to Yousoufian arising from his successful appeal.
 

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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.

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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. 

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