Teenager Wins Email Suit Against City of Kokomo

An anonymous reader writes "Recently, a 16 year old sued the city of Kokomo, Indiana for access to an email list that he suspected the mayor was mis-using for political purposes. Despite the mayor's refusal to give in, the teenager won the case. The city will have to pay not only for the expensive attorneys they hired, but may have to compensate the 16 year old's pro-bono counsel."

Re:Compensate pro bono counsel?

[Stoopid-Guy0]

They were pro-bono with regard to the teenager, so the teen didn't have to pay them. I'm sure they'd still enjoy compensation from someone!

A better headline...

[Anonymous Coward]

My suggestion for a better headline: "American discovers balls"

Now if only the rest of the country could get around to holding their political leaders accountable for their misdeeds.

Beyond the knee-jerk reaction

[Tx]

Beyond the knee-jerk reaction, which would be "yay for the student, and peoples rights" in my case, I kind of think the city has a point, even if it isn't justified in law. I certainly don't want government institiutions making it easy for people to get such lists out of them, although it should be possible.

Why the City Sued

[linuxdoctor]

The plaintiff Nees, said, "I don't see why they spent all of that time and money when they knew it would be in vain. They knew the law wasn't on their side, yet they continued to fight."

Ask Microsoft. They are constantly suing and being sued regardless of their guilt or innocence or even the law. They have all the money and the people suing them usually don't. They can hold out for years until their opponent's money runs out. If they lose in court, they simply appeal and in the end, when and if an appeal goes against them, they simply ignore it. Then the whole process starts all over again. Meanwhile, they keep raking in their ill gotten gains.

I guess the Kokomo mayor thought he might be able to bluff his way through this one. In the end, he probably decided that the political fallout from not complying with the law or appealing the court's decision would be too great. A politician's thinking process is unlike that of a kleptocrat's, errr I mean executives of a major corporation. The executive worries only about money. The politician worries about votes.

Re:what's so good about this?

[BadanTheUgly]

It's good because he wanted to compare this list with the list of people who were receiving political emails (propoganda) from the mayor.
It's bad enough being spammed by freemarketeers trying to sell you Viagra, but at least there's a certain honesty about them. They're in it to make money, pure and simple.
Who wants political spam? Ordinary spam is a waste of time and resources, but is unlikely to result in electoral corruption.
Elected officials should
A. Know better and
B. Not spend taxpayers' money to further their political cause.

Re:what's so good about this?

[hcdejong]

It's the 'You can't have it both ways' principle at work. Things like the Freedom of Information Act force a degree of transparency upon the government. Limiting this access to prevent abuse would have more adverse consequences than the abuse itself.

In this case, the public interest seems obvious to me: did the city abuse a general-purpose/nonpolitical mailing list to send political/partisan mail? I, for one, would not welcome the local overlords spamming me when I'm not a member of their party.

Re:Compensate pro bono counsel?

[Tango42]

He sued the City - you only needed to read the title of the summary to see that.

Re:Compensate pro bono counsel?

[spiritraveller]

He is suing the city because it refused to provide him with the records that he, as a citizen, was entitled to. The mayor's misconduct is just the reason he wanted access to the records, but it is not the basis for his suit.

The purpose of making one side pay the other's legal fees is to encourage people to settle for a fair amount rather than fight a losing case. If we made an exception for pro bono attorneys, it would encourage an opponent of someone using a pro bono attorney to fight to the very end even if the law was completely against them. It would mean that whenever an attorney took a case pro bono, their client would be at a big disadvantage... and the pro bono attorney could expect to spend a lot of time simply proving to the other side that he is willing to work work work for free just to win a case that would have been settled early if only the losing side wasn't playing games.

Re:what's so good about this?

[blueg3]

The laws that are the basis for this are evident in the article. It's an issue of public record. In the interests of the people, many government documents are public record. Mailing addresses are protected to prevent abuse, but e-mail addresses are not. More than likely, they should be, just like mailing addresses. However, it's not really the place of the courts to say, "Well, this *should* be protected, but it isn't, so we'll rule as if it is."

So the case they're faced with is that someone asked for a copy of a public record and the city tried to make it difficult with the intent of preventing the person from obtaining the list. They didn't tell him he had to hand-copy it because they didn't have it in electronic form. They did it with the intent of making it unreasonably difficult to acquire a copy of the list, which directly opposes the spirit of the law regarding public record.

The appropriate step is legislative. Extend to e-mail addresses the same protections as mailing addresses.

You're thinking "contingent fee"

[hey!]

"Pro bono" on the other hand is short for pro bono publicum -- "for the good of the public".

It's a quaint idea, doing something because it's the right thing to do. I don't doubt that increased notoriety is an incentive for pro bono work, although many pro bono cases are ones that will never garner much attention. In this case, I think the judge was eager to punish the defendant, and ordered the pro bono attorney's fees calculated so he'd have an excuse for making the punishment heavier.

This sounds kind of weird to me...

[hot soldering iron]

After reading TFA, is seems to me the whole thing was about who gets to be lazy. The city officials said that he could have the list, but he had to hand copy it himself. He sued to get them to just give him a copy of the list, and compensate his lawyer.

I can sort of see his point. He was comparing two lists: a city newsletter, and one the mayor was using to build up political support. If he hand copied it, they could alway say he made a mistake or changed it, there would be no tracability. But an actual, official copy couldn't be denied. Now I understand why the mayor didn't want to give it out. It was a case of CYA.

Re:Beyond the knee-jerk reaction

[packeteer]

I think nearly everyone who reads into this case will agree with you. Remember when a judge makes a ruling they do not say what is "right" and what is "wrong". In this case the judge simply said that the law did nto cover email address' and if anyone wanted it to they would need to get the legislature to pass a law about it.

I side with the city here but the judge is not out of line making the ruling that was handed down. This is just more evidence of how behind the times our laws are and this is one possible way for spammers and scammers to exploit that.

Re:Kokomo Resident

[reidhoch]

I left Kokomo for 4 years, only moving back to be near family. Most of Kokomo's residents are happy with things because they know nothing else. They just want to graduate high school and get a job at a factory, they really have no aspirations or dreams. Church on Sunday, Work on Monday thru Friday, rinse, repeat.

Hand Copying allowed?

[austinpoet]

What I don't understand is how the government can make a distinction between hand-copying and other forms of copying.

What if I have a hand-held scanner (as was posted the other day on /. and have existed for years)? Is that hand-copying? What if I use a whole candy-machine full of silly puddy? Can I use carbon paper too?

I mean I realize that the government can legislatively make a distinction between a 3lb carrot and a 5lb carrot, but do they think they are being clever with this? Is this security through frustration/writers-cramp? Is there some time limit placed on the copier?

Does the government employ 1000s of workers to hand-compile the list initially?

Re:Pro-Bono Compensation

[eric_harris_76]

What gets me about the compensating-the-teen's-lawyer angle is that apparently the taxpayer's are paying for it.

Shouldn't -- in a more perfect world -- the people who actually misbehaved pay, not the political entity that they were elected to? Which ultimately means, the taxpayers?

Now to work. And when I get home, I'll see if the issue is addressed in the actual article, or in posts I haven't read yet. -Eric

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What about privacy?

[Kohath]

What about the privacy of the people who submitted their email addresses?

This is just typical of Slashdot. If Sony wanted the list for the same reason, then the privacy of the email recipients would matter. Since there's a teenager involved, it's OK for him to violate their privacy all he wants.

It just proves that Slashdoters don't really care about privacy at all. It's just a tool to advance other agendas or bash your enemies.

Since it's a kid, it's ok?

[SpiritGod21]

What's the difference between what this kid did and what the US government is currently trying to do with search engine results? Besides the fact that the kid requested email addresses, not just results that can't be tied to any particular person.

I don't think the government should be able to get those results, but what's with the /. crowd justifying this kid? Because he's one of the "little people," it's ok for the city to hand him a stack of email addresses rather than just shredding them? If that's the case, why not just create a white pages for email and let the spammers have at, like telemarketing companies do with our phones (I have to leave my ringer off these days).

Re:Compensate pro bono counsel?

[Secrity]

The city was the appropriate entity to sue. The suit was about the city refusing to provide the list of email addresses that the kid wanted in order to investigate something the kid thought the mayor was doing wrong. The mayor may have pushed for the city to fight turning over the list, but the the decision to fight the kid's lawsuit would involve many other people, including the city's attorney. The situation was not as simple as it may seem, the whole decision depended upon whether email address lists have the same privacy protection as physical email lists. I think that this story could easily be spun into a loss of personal privacy.

Re:Pro-Bono Compensation

[VenomousGecko]

In your rush to get the first post you seem to have skipped over the part about READING THE ARTICLE! If you would have taken the time to do so, you would have read that the Howard Circuit Judge Lynn Murray wanted the lawyers work accounted for.

"Groth took the case on a pro-bono basis, but Murray asked for an accounting of Groth's fees in her ruling. Groth said Tuesday it's likely he could bill several thousand dollars for the case."

Next time try to do your homework first.

Re:Pro-Bono Compensation

[cp.tar]

I, for one, like the Muppet version better...

Critical mass

[Brunellus]

Language learning in my experience, requires a certain "critical mass" before it becomes useful, fun, or amusing. Two semesters of anything is rarely enough.

Add to this the dismal state of language instruction generally, and Latin instruction in particular, in American schools. Most people have almost nothing to show for two semesters of Latin these days: they can't even read or write simple sentences, or have any appreciation for the language, because, frankly, they haven't put enough work in.

This is true for all language learning in America, I think, and for me, particularly appalling when it comes to Spanish (my other language). Standards are so diluted as to be meaningless, and there is no content to language education. Generations of otherwise-bright kids are being doomed to lives of dull monolingualism, with all of its consequences: intolerance, ignorance, and an inability to compete in the global marketplace.

The real deal

[gregm]

The kid signed up for the city's newsletter and was almost immediately sent spam from the mayor's campaign people. Translated, the mayor (whose name I'll not put up in lights) has free access to the city's mailing list and uses it for personal gain. I think he decided to see if get a copy of the list himself and was denied.

Why should the mayor be allowed to use this list for personal gain but the kid can't? That's why he sued for the info and I expect it's his hope that legislation will get passed to protect that list just like the snailmail addresses are protected by a law that needs to be updated to include email addresses. The kid has a definite past with the mayor. The taxpayers in Kokomo basically paid to make it legal for the mayor to use the city's newsletter list to send everyone on the list spam.

Re:Kokomo Resident

[virg_mattes]

Wow, you're not much of a spin doctor. I know nothing of the city nor of the state of affairs there, and your argument still reads like it's BS put out by someone who's trying to protect McKillip. Let's take just the first few points:

> Wow! So let me get this straight. Trying to protect the citizens is something to attack the mayor on, right?

You'll have a hard time convincing anyone here that offering a list for hand-copying but not in a more suitable format is "trying to protect the citizens" and not "trying to make the investigation so painful that it'll go away." Moreover, once it became clear that the law wasn't going to support him directly, capituating would be more in the interests of his constiuency than fighting to the bitter and very expensive end.

> He is trying to promote family instead of a "get married, if it doesn't work out, who cares?" attitude, since the divorce rate in Kokomo is approx. 50%.

Firstly, the divorce rate nationwide is around 50 percent, and secondly, there's a huge span between wanting to promote family and commenting that divorce should be criminalized. That he would even think that, much less say it, indicates that he's far too concerned with pushing his brand of morality on others to be entrusted with public office.

> The public meetings? He did so in accordance to law. Those meetings were suppose to be closed.

Is the definition of "public" in public meetings somehow confusing to you? What reasonable argument can you present that meetings of public officials discussing public business shouldn't be open to the public? What could a mayor possibly talk about in meetings that the general public shouldn't have access to? Last I checked, mayors don't discuss military or classified subjects in the course of their duties. It sounds more like he wants to talk about stuff that he'd rather his constituents don't hear about, and because of the above-stated reasons I suspect that means stuff that would get him in trouble if he wasn't allowed to control access. That's unacceptable in a public office.

> Maybe those "top campaign" contributers are the most qualified? Oh, and EVERY policitian does that.

First, you argue that these top contributors got the jobs for being most qualified, then you excuse the behavior by saying "every politician does that". Which is it? Did they get the jobs by being qualified, or should we excuse the cronyism because it's widespread? Didn't your mother teach you that "everyone does it" doesn't make it right?

To put it bluntly, these comments of yours do little to reassure me that you're anything more than a shill. After the list I just reviewed, reading that you think he's an honest man carries no weight because I see nothing in your testimony that leads me to think you're an unbiased or honest commentator. Here's a hint: when you say that even after you no longer work with him, that you can call or email him and he'll respond personally, that says to others that you're a part of his inner circle. Maybe you should check to see whether the average citizen can do that before you try to use it to demonstrate that he's not better to those he knows than everyone else. People who are only honest and open with their friends aren't generally considered honest and open.

Virg