Penalties

The Washington state Supreme Court unanimously ruled last week that Justice Richard Sanders, a member of the court, was entitled to receive four documents wrongfully withheld from disclosure based on claimed attorney-client and work product privileges, in a case springing from an ethics investigation against the judge.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill today overhauling the state’s freedom of information law.

The legislation has been sitting on Quinn’s desk for several months since squeaking out of the last legislative session at its very end.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio's office will indeed have to pay more than $25,000 to cover a newspaper's attorney's fees in a public records case.

The city of New Orleans committed a "flagrant violation of the law" and must pay nearly $7,000 in penalties for ignoring a local TV station's public records request for nearly two months, a judge ruled last week.

A nearly $124,000 fine slapped on Washington's King County is not penalty enough for "grossly negligent noncompliance" with a 1997 Public Records Act request, the state Supreme Court said on Thursday.