– Submitted by San Juan County

Judge Susan Cook of Skagit County Superior Court has awarded Sheryl Albritton attorney’s fees and in doing so concluded the lawsuit against San Juan County under the Public Records Act.

The court awarded the two attorneys, a Seattle lawyer and local lawyer, slightly less than $30,000 in attorney’s fees after the lawyers had asked for over $62,000 in fees. The final court ruling will also include the amount the county previously agreed to pay in the amount of $22,501.

Albritton brought her lawsuit to follow up on requests for a code enforcement file which she alleged should have contained records concerning a whistleblower complaint.

The county responded that the final whistleblower report was properly identified and timely released, but in auditing the file a few other pages related to the code enforcement mistakenly had not been delivered to Albritton. To minimize the costs to citizens, the county provided every possible document and offered a judgment of $22,501 plus reasonable attorney’s fees through the date of the offer in order.

The county’s attorney, Jeffrey Myers, stated that “Although we believe the amount of fees should have been about $11,000 given how promptly we dealt with the situation. We are grateful the court did not accept Albritton’s attorneys’ request for $62,000.”

Myers added that the county has a method set out in its code for bringing mistakes to the attention of the county before a final decision is made on a records case.  “If people use that process in the future, they should get the records they deserve without a big windfall to a few citizens and attorneys.”

The resolution of the lawsuit allows the county to proceed with implementing improvements to its public records program including adoption of new tracking software to allow more efficient responses to public records requests. The court’s ruling came on the same day that staff was being trained in the new records software.