Victory in Public Records Act case for Kim Waldbaum and Stew Estes

On November 22, 2013, Stew Estes and Kim Waldbaum obtained a victory for the University of Washington in a novel Public Records Act case. The King County Superior Court dismissed an action brought under the PRA seeking the personal emails sent by a professor. He unfortunately disregarded UW policy and used his University email account for all his personal correspondence. The court held that despite the fact that the 3,000+ messages were sent from a government account and stored on the UW server, they were not “public records” subject to disclosure.  The court denied the plaintiff's request for penalties and attorney’s fees against the University of Washington for withholding the records.