Award of Uniontown newspaper’s authorized costs around records ask for upheld | Criminal offense and Courts

The justices claimed the $118,000 cost was justified for the reason that of how jail program officials and staff members responded to a newspaper’s request for information and facts relating to a fly ash dump and feasible h2o contamination.

A reporter with the Uniontown Herald-Typical requested for the documents in September 2014 to examine into worries that fly ash or water contamination may possibly have been sickening persons within the jail or in a nearby local community. Fly ash is a byproduct of burning coal to deliver electricity.

A Commonwealth Courtroom choose two yrs back established that in its preliminary reaction to the request, Corrections did not appropriately look for for records in its possession prior to denying obtain, and hence acted in negative religion, justifying reimbursing the paper’s legal expenditures.

Justice Sallie Mundy wrote that the court’s bulk identified it wasn’t sufficient for the agency’s open up documents officer to just depend on “representations of some others without inquiring as to what investigation was made and without having reviewing the records.”

A two-justice dissent reported the technological language of the Correct-to-Know Regulation did not supply for authorized costs as were awarded in the situation, suggesting that would demand a legislative modify to the statute. The other dissent concluded the Corrections Department’s lookup for responsive information experienced not been accomplished in terrible religion.