Government Code Section 6259(d) Provides for Mandatory Fee Award to Prevailing Plaintiff.
California has a Public Records Act (CPRA), Government Code sections 6250-6276.48, modeled after the federal Freedom of Information Act. Persons can request release of certain public records, subject to exemptions, and can sue to compel release of documents from a public agency improperly denying CPRA requests. CPRA also has a mandatory fee-shifting provision: under section 6259(d), “[t]he court shall award court costs and reasonable attorney fees to the plaintiff should the plaintiff prevail in the litigation filed pursuant to this section [6259].” The City of Redding recently learned the sting that can come from this mandatory fee provision.
Record Searchlight, a newspaper, sued for purposes of obtaining an order compelling Redding to release almost 1,500 in documents relating to a City investigation that certain employees conducted affairs on city property during work hours and exchanged pornographic emails on city computers. Its suit was brought under CPRA section 6259.
In April 2008, Shasta County Superior Court Judge Jack Halpin ordered Redding to release the documents and emails to Record Searchlight. Judge Halpin ruled that “[t]he public has a right to know how the City dealt with these policy violations.” He did place some conditions on disclosure, especially allowing redaction of lower level employee names from the documents. Eventually, 1,491 documents were released by Redding to the newspaper.
The newspaper then moved for a fee and costs award under section 6259(d). On June 26, 2008, Judge Halpin ordered Redding to pay $36,288 in fees to the newspaper. (He did deny a request to reimburse it $828.72 in copying costs.)
City Attorney Rick Duvernay was quoted in a June 28, 2008 Record Searchlight article as saying, “The law with respect to recovery of attorneys fees in these cases is slanted in favor of those bringing the lawsuit.” Silas Lyons, Record Searchlight editor, had this to say about the dispute: “the city made a bad call in trying to keep this information secret” and “this case was a win for open government, plain and simple.”
Incidentally, section 6259(d) also provides that a public agency can obtain mandatory fee recovery if it can demonstrate to the court that the plaintiff’s CPRA case was “clearly frivolous.”