After more than a year of harassment, false innuendo, defamatory comments, and frivolous legal action from ex-councilman Dan Clawson, his lawsuit against me and my council colleagues has been firmly and completely thrown out by the court.
King County Judge Mary Yu made it very clear in her ruling that she takes the Open Public Meetings Act very seriously, and she would do anything to protect it. She also said she read every word of the sworn statements and supporting materials that Dan Clawson submitted to her. She also looked at Dan’s post-it notes he dug out of the trash can. And then for purposes of this Summary Judgment Hearing, the judge made the legal assumption that all of the disputed facts and inferences went in Dan Clawson’s direction, as if a jury fully agreed with Dan’s version of the facts (which I know they would not if went to trial). Even giving Dan the benefit of all the assumptions, claims, and inferences, King County Judge Mary Yu determined that that the Open Public Meetings Act was NOT violated.
In fact, the judge questioned Dan extensively on how Dan Clawson presumed we council members were supposed to accomplish our normal responsibilities without talking to one another occasionally in our offices, something that Dan tried to present as a violation. “Groups-of-two” he called them, as if there was something sinister about the council president talking to a committee chair.
Along the way, Dan insulted me repeatedly in the media and in court. He harassed me at my office, he wasted time by many city staff, he temporarily froze and overburdened our email and records systems, and he cost the city of Renton a large amount of money.
Latest estimates are that Dan cost the city about $43,000 in legal fees alone. We will be able to recover a small fraction of these costs, around $2000, from Dan as a result of the judge’s recent ruling. But the rest is lost funds, unless we find a way to counter-sue him for the waste.
LEGAL DOCUMENTS
Here are the key legal documents:
Here is our request for summary judgement
Here is our rebuttal to Dan’s rant that I mentioned in my last blog on this topic
Here is the judges order that throws the case out of court.
But this is not all the news…
DAN’S APPEAL
I was going to give Dan a chance for a new beginning– I held off in this blog even though this ruling occurred last week. However, word has come today that Dan Clawson (who does his own legal work) has now filed a virtually impossible appeal of the judges ruling that threw his case out. Even if Dan could win such an appeal, it would not win his case for him– it would only give him a chance go to trial (where the jury would find the facts are against Dan). And Dan can not win this appeal. To do so, he now faces a much higher burden than he did at the last hearing. The appellate court will actually assume all the disputed facts are AGAINST Dan Clawson’s position when the court decides whether or not to overturn the Superior Court Judge.
So, Dan may end up costing us another $15,000 or more in legal fees and many hours of staff time just to handle paperwork through this pointless appeals phase.
In the economic climate we are in, we have had to leave dozens of public safety positions unfilled, and eliminate positions of School Resource Police Officers. We have also reduced contributions to many social services, such as King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, RAYS, and other very worthy causes.
With the money Dan Clawson has cost the city, including out-of-pocket legal fees and city staff time, we could have restored one of these public safety positions, enhanced our support of KCSARC and RAYS, restored some funding to another department, or reduced taxes or fees.
Finally, I will point out again that the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) is an excellent law, that I zealously support and promote, and all of us Washington residents benefit from the transparency it instills into government processes. OPMA is more than a law…it is a philosophy of including the public in ALL stages of government decision making, something that I have always striven for. This philosophy is why I place my email in a citizen retrievable file; why I always steer toward giving more than enough opportunity for public input, and why I started this blog. Ironically, Dan Clawson hatched this lawsuit after a night when I wanted to allow extra public input at a meeting when he wanted to shut it down; and when he sent his lawsuit to the newspapers he mocked me for sharing my email. I was on a committee with Dan in which we were working on email policy. During those deliberations, Dan made it clear that he did not want his council email to be read by the public unless they filled out Freedom of Information forms first, and gave Dan a chance to keep some of his correspondence private. And Dan was the instigator of an email which was sent to three other council members (but not all seven) in an apparent effort to obtain a behind-the-scenes majority prior to a council vote…to date, the most clear violation of OPMA standards that the city has documented. For all these reasons, Dan’s failed lawsuit seemed as hypocritical as it does wasteful.
In this appeals chapter, Dan will make his last stand on an issue he has been on the wrong side of from day one. I am thankful that I will no longer be bothered by his daily requests for more records; Dan will be forced by the court to work only with the data he has amassed in the last thirteen months (the record as it stands), he can not harass anybody at city hall for more depositions, affidavits, etc. This will give us a greater ability to forget about Dan while we work on the issues important to the citizens of Renton. Our attorney Mike Kenyon, who has done a professional and diligent job of representing the city’s interests, will continue to handle Dan Clawson for us. I wish Dan Clawosn would realize the 2007 election is over, that the courts have looked at his evidence in the most favorable way the could for him and ruled against him, and that he might find the strength to let go of this loss and move on.
