{"id":24023,"date":"2025-06-29T08:23:18","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T08:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/24023\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T08:23:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T08:23:18","slug":"judge-orders-jacksonville-activist-to-pay-134000-after-public-records-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/24023\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge orders Jacksonville activist to pay $134,000 after public-records dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DuvalDuval County Courthouse Credit: Michael Curi<\/a><\/p>\n

Circuit Judge Kathryn D. Weston ruled last week that a Jacksonville activist must reimburse State Attorney Melissa Nelson\u2019s office $134,000 in legal fees stemming from a years-long fight<\/a> over access to public records.<\/p>\n

Curtis Lee, a frequent public-records filer, originally sued Nelson\u2019s office in 2020 for what he alleged were violations of the Florida Public Records Act. In 2022, the Court sided with the state attorney. Nelson\u2019s office then filed a \u201cmotion to recover their fees and costs\u201d shortly after \u2013 a relatively new provision in the law that allows public agencies to collect attorneys fees in the event of frivolous records litigation. Nelson\u2019s office hired an outside attorney to help fight the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Last week\u2019s ruling puts an end to the litigation surrounding that motion: Weston ruled Lee\u2019s suit was filed \u201cfor an improper purpose,\u201d making Lee liable for the money the state attorney spent fighting him in court.<\/p>\n

An open-government advocate previously told The Tributary<\/a> that a ruling against Lee could have a \u201cchilling and dangerous\u201d effect, emphasizing the good-faith nature of most records requests, which help to ensure government transparency.<\/p>\n

Weston ruled that Lee, a former lawyer who has successfully brought public-records suits against government agencies in the past, harbored animus for the state attorney. She concluded that \u201cno reasonable person\u201d would have filed his 2020 lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Jennifer Mansfield, who represented Curtis Lee in this case, is a member of The Tributary\u2019s board of directors and a financial supporter of The Tributary. Three lawyers at the Bedell law firm, which represents the State Attorney\u2019s Office in this case, are also financial supporters of The Tributary.<\/p>\n

Mary Beech is The Tributary\u2019s Investigative Reporting Fellow for summer 2025. <\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Avatar\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMary Beech is The Tributary\u2019s Investigative Reporting Fellow for summer 2025. She is a student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, and has written stories on housing,…\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Mary Beech\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Duval County Courthouse Credit: Michael Curi Circuit Judge Kathryn D. Weston ruled last week that a Jacksonville activist…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,3188,723,7310,21683,21684,21685,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-24023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-public-records","13":"tag-public-records-activist","14":"tag-public-records-lawsuit","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114765693195403699","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}