PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County has settled a Public Records Act lawsuit with Sequim resident Joe D’Amico for $187,356.
County commissioners approved the settlement on Aug. 17 “to avoid costly ongoing litigation over inadvertent errors the County readily admits, and to cap potential damages,” county officials said in a press release.
D’Amico, who filed the suit in June 2018 in Clallam County Superior Court, had sought millions of dollars in damages.
His suit said the county had committed 2,353 separate Public Records Act (PRA) violations in 2017 after D’Amico requested extensive records in regard to the suicide of Tommy Lorecki. Lorecki hanged himself in the Jefferson County Jail in September 2016, according to a written statement from D’Amico this week.
Portions of some of the records county officials provided D’Amico were redacted, and the officials provided an explanatory exemption log describing each redaction, as required by the PRA, said Philip Morley, county administrator, in a press release.
D’Amico said Wednesday he agreed with the settlement.
“I had no intention of bankrupting the county,” D’Amico said in the emailed statement. “I just wanted Tommy Lorecki to have his story told and ensure this didn’t happen to anyone else in the future.
“The settlement amount of $187,356 accomplished that.”
D’Amico had filed the lawsuit 364 days after receiving the records. He questioned the correctness under the PRA of some of the redactions and explanations, Morley said.
The county reviewed the cases and acknowledged there were errors and made corrections, Morley said.
“Jefferson County strongly supports the Public Records Act and we work hard at making government transparent,” said Greg Brotherton, commission chair. “We get hundreds of records requests every year, many of them large and complex.
“Despite investing significant resources in dollars, a full-time Public Records Officer, staff time in departments, computers, software and legal technical advice on correctly fulfilling records requests, occasional technical mistakes still can and will happen.”
D’Amico amended the suit, seeking damages of up to $100 per error times the 364 days after he received the documents and before he filed a lawsuit, plus attorney fees for his attorney Greg Overstreet.
D’Amico said Overstreet put in “dozens of hours of work.”
Judges in PRA cases have discretion to rule by either document, pages or errors, multiplied by the number of days the records were delayed, Mark McCauley, county central services director, said Thursday.
The number of violations D’Amico alleged was 2,535, and he claims he waited a total of 512 days for the full records, meaning a daily penalty of even $1 would result in a penalty of $1,297,920. A $100 daily penalty per violation would result in a penalty of $129,792,000, D’Amico said.
Morley said there were only 128 pages in question, and judges normally count public records on a per-document or per-page basis — not individual error — thus having a maximum potential penalty of $4.66 million plus attorneys’ fees for the 364-day delay that was initially filed, Morley said in the press release.
“Penalties rarely reach up to $100 per record,” Morley said. “Judges often impose penalties in the range of cents up to $2 to $10 per record, but there is always risk and uncertainty when in court.”
McCauley said that ruling by error was still a possibility if the settlement hadn’t been reached.
Acknowledging the errors that the county had corrected and to cap the potential penalties and liability for Overstreet’s legal fees, the county made the Offer of Judgment of $187,356, which set both the county’s penalties and the attorneys’ fees that the county would pay, and D’Amico accepted the offer, which resolved the case without trial, Morley said.
“As soon as the county realizes we’ve made a mistake, we fix it,” Morley said. “It is unfortunate that Mr. D’Amico waited almost a full year, just one day before the statute of limitations would have run, before making the county aware there was an error in the records we provided, and then sued the county for penalties for the period he waited.”
“If he had informed the County sooner, we would have fixed the problem sooner,” Morley said in the press release.
“That would have saved taking funds that should go for public services for everybody, and using them to pay Mr. D’Amico for penalties and attorney’s fees instead.”
The public records request was submitted to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) on Feb. 15, 2017, seeking all reports regarding Lorecki’s death.
According to D’Amico’s statement, “JCSO fell behind on the handling of public records, apparently due to the resignation of (Sheriff David) Stanko’s confidential secretary, and did not fulfill the records request until June 22, 2017.
“Many, many words in the document were redacted (crossed out with ink), and the release of entire documents was denied.”
D’Amico was personally interested in Lorecki’s case, as he had sponsored Lorecki in 2015 at both in-patient and out-patient drug rehabilitation.
Lorecki was booked into the Jefferson County jail for investigation of driving under the influence (DUI) and third-degree driving with a suspended license.
He had been taken off suicide watch after a prior attempt and was alone in a cell when he was found Sept. 16, 2016, hanging from a bed sheet, D’Amico said. He died the next day at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
D’Amico was unsatisfied with Stanko authorizing one of his own staff members to lead the investigation instead of asking for an outside law enforcement agency to look into it, and with the fact that the internal investigation did not fault the jail corrections staff.
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Jefferson County reporter Zach Jablonski can be reached by email at zjablonski@peninsuladailynews.com or by phone at 360-385-2335, ext. 5.
