A nationwide court reporting company is seeking more than $1 million in attorneys’ fees from the Vermont judiciary after prevailing in a fight over quicker access to newly filed lawsuits.
Courthouse News Service, a Pasadena, California-based company, was joined by news outlets across Vermont in its lawsuit filed in May. A federal judge last month granted the outlets an injunction prohibiting the state’s court’s system from delaying the release of the documents.
Meanwhile, the Vermont judiciary — represented by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office — is appealing the order by Judge Christina Reiss.
Reiss, in her ruling, slammed Vermont’s practice of blocking the public release of newly filed lawsuits until court staff had reviewed the filings to ensure no confidential information was included, which, at times, has resulted in delays of several days.
Reiss has yet to rule on the legal fees request, including attorneys’ fees and other costs. It’s unclear if she would issue a decision while the Vermont judiciary’s appeal is pending before the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
According to Reiss’s ruling, the timely access to the filings allows for the public to understand what’s happening in the court system, provides for accountability and informs people about matters of public concern.
“Defendants’ pre-access review thwarts these objectives in an inconsistent, unpredictable and unjustifiable manner,” Reiss wrote. “Defendants have violated the public’s and plaintiffs’ First Amendment right of access to newly filed complaints.”
Courthouse News Service this week filed its motion seeking to recoup about $1,016,000 for attorneys fees based on 1,491 hours, plus $50,000 for other expenses. It argues that it is entitled to those fees under federal law as the prevailing party in the case.
Charity Clark, chief of staff to Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan, referred comment Thursday on the case to the Vermont judiciary.
Scott Griffith, chief of planning and court services for the Vermont court administrator’s office, reiterated the judiciary’s contention that it is following state statute and court rules adopted by the Vermont Supreme Court.
“The Vermont Judiciary has filed this appeal on behalf of Vermonters and others who come before the state’s courts whose private information, such as social security numbers, should be protected,” Griffith said in an email to VTDigger.
He said he expected the judiciary to ask the federal judge to defer considering the attorneys’ fees and cost request until the appeal has been ruled on.
“If it is necessary to address the request, we anticipate opposing it,” Griffith said.
Courthouse News Service is the only party seeking the attorneys’ fees and costs because it had paid the other plaintiffs lawyers’ fees and expenses incurred in the matter, the organization said in its filing.
Lawyers for Courthouse News Service wrote that “given the important First Amendment rights at stake,” the organization needed experienced counsel who had litigated similar issues “and understood the importance of protecting the right of the press and public to know about civil litigation in a timely fashion, while the news is still fresh.”
Among the parties joining in the legal action were the Vermont Press Association and the New England First Amendment Coalition, as well as the parent entities of VTDigger.org, Seven Days, the Burlington Free Press and WCAX-TV.
Other participants included the Vermont Community Newspaper Group, which operates weekly newspapers in Stowe, Morristown, South Burlington, Shelburne and Charlotte, and the parent company of the Rutland Herald/Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.
Lawyer William Hibsher, an attorney with Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP in New York City, served as the lead counsel in the case.
Hibsher said Thursday that the legal work included extensive research, hiring an expert witness, work related to an October hearing in federal court in Burlington and more.
In its filing, the news service also asserts that tactics by the Vermont judiciary’s counsel also helped ring up the attorneys’ fees and costs, such as its introduction of a theory that Vermont’s courts provide better access than other courts across the country.
That led the judiciary to seek elaborate and expensive information — including a request for Courthouse News Services to provide electronic publication data for more than 1.4 million cases it had covered over the past 10 years and the frequency that its staff has visited courts over that same time period — according to the news service’s filing.
Courthouse News Service, according to the motion, has five bureau chiefs who supervise almost 240 reporters covering over 3,000 courts in all 50 states.
The injunction remains in place as the appeal is pending, Hibsher said. She said she is optimistic that the Second Circuit would agree with Reiss’s decision, which “really addressed many of the Second Circuit precedents which govern the issues that are implicated by the case.”
Bill Girdner, editor of Courthouse News Service, said in an email Thursday that he also believed that the judge’s ruling would stand, calling the decision “well reasoned and thorough.”
“It ensures the press and public will have the same access to new filings that the press and public already have in Connecticut and New York, the other states in the Second Circuit,” Girdner said.
