Facts: After an email allegedly authored by respondent Beth O’Neill that accused members of the Shoreline City Council of improper conduct was discussed at a council meeting, O’Neill requested that she be provided with the email and with all associated metadata (embedded information that would identify how and from whom the email had been received and its forwarding chain). The petitioner city of Shoreline subsequently provided O’Neill with a hard copy of the email string but informed her that it could not provide her with the metadata associated with the email as the original email had been deleted. O’Neill responded by filing suit against the city in the Superior Court for King County, asserting that the city had violated the disclosure requirements of the Public Records Act (Washington Revised Code §42.56). The trial court dismissed O’Neill’s claim, ruling that metadata was not a public record for purposes of §42.56. Upon appeal, the Washington Court of Appeals reversed, holding that metadata was a public record and that O’Neill was entitled to it as it might disclose information not contained in the hard copy of the email string that had been provided to her. The city of Shoreline appealed this decision to the Supreme Court of Washington.

Question(s): Is metadata a public record subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act?

Conclusion: Justice Owens’ opinion for the Court concluded that as the requested email was a public record subject to disclosure under §42.56, its embedded metadata was an integral part of the record that was necessarily also subject to disclosure. However, the Court also held that it could not be determined whether the city had violated §42.56 until the city attempted to extract the metadata, as extracting it might not reveal any additional information that was not already contained in the hard copy of the email string O’Neill had been provided with. Thus, the Court remanded the case to the trial court.

Docket No. 82397-9 (from Court of Appeals Division I Case No. 59534-2)

Petitioner: City of Shoreline

(Counsel: Ramsey E. Ramerman, Flannary Pasieka Collins, and Ian Richard Sievers)

Respondent: Beth O'Neill

(Counsel: Michele Lynn Earl-Hubbard, Michael G. Brannan, David M. Norman, and Christopher Roslaniec)

Briefs:

Argument: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 2:30pm

[Source: TVW, http://tvw.org]

Decided: Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Prevailing Party: Beth O'Neill (Respondent)

Vote: 5-4

Citation: Pending

Court: Madsen1 Court (2010-2011)

Madsen

Johnson

Alexander
(Dissent)

Sanders

Chambers

Owens
(Majority)

Fairhurst

Johnson

Stephens

Opinion

Dissent