A lawsuit claims the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville failed to comply with the state's open records law when it did not hand over five years' worth of emails from the director of the Arkansas Water Resources Center and another university employee.
Wade Cash, a former researcher at the center, requested the emails in January 2013. The lawsuit claims he instead received only emails "which contained the word 'wade', and possibly not all of those emails."
The lawsuit, filed Friday, asks for UA to "immediately provide the information requested."
Rick Woods, the attorney for Cash, said his client was wrongfully fired in August 2012.
"I think he's looking to clear his name," Woods said, adding that Cash wants the records for "the ammunition to show he wasn't fired for misconduct or other bad behavior, that's his main concern."
The UA does not comment on pending lawsuits, said university spokesman Steve Voorhies.
The state's open records law "gives Arkansans access to public records and public meetings, with limited exceptions," according to the state attorney general's office.
The lawsuit, filed in Washington County Circuit Court, includes several pages of emails going back and forth between Cash and lawyers for the university, who asked Cash to make a more specific request.
Cash on Jan. 8, 2013, asked for all incoming and outgoing emails going back to the beginning of 2008 for email accounts associated with Brian Haggard, director of the Arkansas Water Resources Center, and Leslie Massey, at one time another employee of the center. Cash also asked for cellphone records going back to the beginning of 2012 for both Haggard and Massey.
Scott Varady, a university attorney, wrote in a March 11, 2013, email, according to the lawsuit, that after Cash did not modify his request, "the University, therefore, proceeded to review records for the past five years and locate any records relating or concerning you."
Varady continued: "If you are looking for records relating to a certain subject matter or matters, University officials" are "prepared to search for the 'specific' items you are seeking. The law, however, does not require any public entity to produce 'ALL' records as you assert. As just one example, emails might address the job performance of other employees and thus be exempt from disclosure. Those records or portions of records would generally be required to be withheld and not released under the law."
Woods said documents handed over by UA were heavily redacted. The lawsuit also claims the university "allowed the person's records being requested to redact the records, excessively, in violation of FOIA as opposed to the custodian of records making a diligent and objective redaction."
The lawsuit cites an Oct. 7 letter from Tamla Lewis, another university attorney. According to court records, it states: "Given the number of records and the time it would take Mr. Haggard and Ms. Massey to gather them, as well as the amount of time it would take for me to review the records, the University might not be able to provide the requested records without essentially shutting down part of its operations, which is not the purpose of the FOIA."
A Little Rock attorney told the Democrat-Gazette last year that public entities responding to a request for email records often ask employees to sort through their own emails to determine whether they are public or private.
In an email, university spokesman Mark Rushing described how the UA handles open records requests for emails:
"With respect to email, with guidance from campus officials, account holders are generally asked to identify and provide all potentially responsive records, which are then subject to further review. ... When necessary, account holders may be asked to assist campus officials by identifying records or portions of records that may not be subject to release, but the determination of what records are responsive and what is exempt from disclosure is made by the institution," Rushing wrote.
NW News on 06/17/2014