A citizen who won a public records lawsuit against the Knox County Sheriff has asked an appeals court for a rehearing on a ruling that vacated the trial court’s award of about $58,000 in attorney’s fees and expenses.
Meghan Conley won a public records lawsuit against the Knox County Sheriff. The appeals court affirmed the trial court’s rulings except for the amount of attorney’s fees awarded to Conley.
Meghan Conley, represented by attorney Andrew Fels, argues in the petition that remanding the case to the trial court to recalculate attorney’s fees undermines the “Legislature’s purpose and intent in enacting the fee provision of the (Tennessee Public Records Act) and will deter lawyers from litigating against a government violator…”
The petition also argues that the sheriff’s office made an assertion about how the attorney fees were awarded that was not based on the court record.
Conley won a hard-fought case against the Knox County Sheriff in April 2020 after bench hearings that stretched over a year. She sought records that were related to the sherrif’s office agreement with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement concerning the detention of suspects.
The hearings at the trial court revealed questionable tactics by the sheriff’s office in denying access to basic records like arrest reports and an unusual system of email retention that required all sheriff office employees to print out emails for retention because they would otherwise be electronically deleted within 30 days.
In his 2020 ruling, Chancellor John Weaver ordered the Knox County Sheriff to implement a new system to enable public inspection of arrest records. He also prohibited the sheriff’s office from “treating a written request for inspection or copies generally phrased in terms of information sought as insufficient for lack of specificity or detail automatically because the written request is generally phrased in terms of information sought.”
The Knox County Sheriff appealed the trial court’s decision on the award of attorney fees and Weaver’s consideration of the law’s requirement that a request be “sufficiently detailed to enable the governmental entity to identify the specific records for inspection and copying.”
The appeals court on Feb. 1, 2022, affirmed all of Chancellor Weaver’ ruling, including regarding the sufficiency of requests, except for the amount of attorney fees awarded to Conley.
Appeals Court remands for re-calculation of attorney’s fees
The appeals court said that because the trial court found that the sheriff was “willful” in denying only two of Conley’s public records requests, attorney’s fees could be awarded only in connection with those two requests.
The public records law states “[i]f a court finds that the governmental entity, or agent thereof, refusing to disclose a record, knew that such record was public and willfully refused to disclose it, such court may, in its discretion, assess all reasonable costs involved in obtaining the record, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, against the nondisclosing governmental entity…”
“The legislature’s use of singular nouns and pronouns, i.e., ‘a record,’ ‘such record,’ ‘it,’ and ‘the record,’ demonstrates the legislature’s intent that the courts apply the discretionary fees provision to each individual records request when determining whether to award attorney’s fees and costs,” the appeals court said in its ruling.
Fels, in his petition for a rehearing writes: “There can be no dispute that Professor Conley won this case at trial and on appeal. She received full relief on the merits. After presiding over lengthy proceedings below, Chancellor Weaver awarded her a comprehensive package of relief, which was affirmed by this Court. This relief was designed to redress the Sheriff’s illegal policies and practices under the TPRA. Professor Conley defended the award of this cross-cutting relief in this Court, and the decision of the Chancellor was affirmed undisturbed.”
He also argued that “nothing in the record shows that Chancellor Weaver awarded fees based on requests that were not willfully denied. Indeed, in his Memorandum Opinion, Chancellor Weaver expressly rejected Professor Conley’s lodestar approach. He instead stated that the factual basis for his award was the previous finding ‘that Petitioner was entitled to an award of costs, including attorney’s fees, in obtaining relief given’ ” in obtaining certain emails and access to arrest records.
‘This cannot be a fair and just result’
He suggested that the appellate court’s decision “diminishes the language of the fee provision itself… which gives exclusive fee award discretion to the trial court.”
Fels also asked for a rehearing on the court’s decision to not award attorney’s fees for work on the appeal. The court had ruled that “in view of the fact that Ms. Conley has not prevailed on the issue of her trial attorney’s fees, we decline to exercise our discretion to award her attorney’s fees on appeal.”
Fels said if that decision is allowed to stand, “the result here would permit law-breaking government entities, who have ample legal and financial resources to devote to extending a case on appeal, to file an appeal in the hope that the appellate court would rule in its favor on at least one of its issues, thus leading to the denial of all appellate fees,” noting that the appeals court upheld all of Weaver’s ruling except the attorney’s fee calculation.
“The Court’s ruling on appellate fees and costs in this case undermines the Legislature’s desire to compensate lawyers for their work on successful TPRA cases. The decision sends a clear, chilling message to citizens and lawyers who agree to represent citizens in litigation against a government agency with seemingly unlimited resources that their work will not be compensated and, indeed, the litigant will be punished for having brought (and won) the suit in the first place. This cannot be a fair and just result under TPRA.”
