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Comment by tptacek

2 months ago

A losing public body is also generally on the hook for attorney's fees, which can be considerable. But the general problem here is that the public bodies are all spending someone else's money, so the real deterrent you have is how much of their time you can credibly threaten to eat up with legal actions.

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tptacek

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qingcharles  2 months ago

That's true, as long as you are represented. I knew one lawyer in Illinois who would sit in FOIA court and take all the non-represented persons aside and offer to take their cases and split the attorney fees 50/50. I believe it isn't strictly above-board, but it is a solution to a problem.

People don't like being put under oath, so you can somewhat temper a public body's future refusals by deposing them or sticking as many of them on the stand. Especially with depositions, if you aren't represented then you can't be giving any attorney discipline for asking completely outrageous questions to force the deponent to admit crimes etc under oath.

  • tptacek  2 months ago

    I went up against my muni over their refusal to release their police General Orders (which seems real dumb in retrospect; we got the General Orders from most of Chicagoland with no protest†). I reached out to Matt Topic, who offered to sue for free, or send a nastygram for a billable hour.

    I ended up doing the latter, because I gotta work in this town, but one consequence of fee recovery is that it's much easier to get representation for a FOIA suit.

    † https://github.com/jjarmoc/chicago-area-general-orders/

avar  2 months ago 

    > so the real deterrent you
    > have is how much of their
    > time you can credibly threaten
    > to eat up with legal actions.

Being threatened with billable hours? They must be terrified.