York Daily Record v. City of York
Background
The York Daily Record submitted a request for public records under the Right to Know Act for records, particularly from the police department, concerning the York riots and two murders which occurred at the time, one of an African American woman and the other of a York City police officer. The city attempted to charge the newspaper for labor costs totaling in excess of $16,000 allegedly incurred by the police while searching for the records during the 1960s and 1970s. The newspaper contended such charges were not permitted under the Act.
Solution
Craig Staudenmaier represented the newspaper and argued that the Act did not permit such charges, particularly where the labor charges stemmed from searches conducted using "overtime" pay and when the time spent was primarily due to poor record storage and indexing. In addition, Mr. Staudenmaier persuaded the court to allow him to search the records to save the city the expense and time. Although the city had allegedly spent months searching records and produced only a handful of documents, when the newspaper's lawyers were finally allowed to conduct the search they reviewed more than 1000 boxes of records in just over two days.
Result
The newspaper won both before the lower court and before the Commonwealth Court on appeal. Both courts agreed with Mr. Staudenmaier's position that the Right to Know Act did not permit such charges, that to do so could make it nearly impossible for the average citizen to obtain public records to which they were entitled and that the poor record keeping of the city was no excuse for the delay and inordinate charges.
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