May 25, 2016 – The News Service of Florida
An appeals court Wednesday rejected arguments that a consultant to the South Florida Water Management District should have to pay attorney’s fees for an organization that filed a public-records lawsuit. The decision by a panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal upheld a lower-court ruling in favor of the consultant, Wantman Group, Inc. The case stemmed from an April 2014 email to Wantman Group seeking records related to a contract with the water management district. After the consultant did not respond, the Citizens Awareness Foundation, Inc. filed a lawsuit seeking access to the records and asking for the consultant to pay its attorney’s fees. The Wantman Group argued, in part, that the email appeared to be spam and that it did not know the records request was legitimate until the lawsuit was filed. A Palm Beach County circuit judge sided with the consultant, and the appeals court upheld that ruling, saying in part that the request was made from an undisclosed sender. “There was no indication that the e-mail request was made on behalf of a person or company,” said Wednesday’s ruling, written by appeals-court Judge Robert Gross and joined by judges W. Matthew Stevenson and Alan Forst. “The e-mail did not contain any information about how to contact the person or corporation making the request. There was an incorrectly spelled word in the e-mail, which is one of the markers of spam. This is the type of e-mail that is filtered out as spam by many businesses, along with requests for assistance in moving money out of Nigerian banks. The e-mail was directed to an independent contractor and not a governmental agency familiar with fielding public records requests. Appellant (the Citizens Awareness Foundation) waited merely 18 days, without any further inquiry, and then filed suit, claiming a right to attorney’s fees.” [READ MORE]