Metadata is Subject to Disclosure Pursuant to Washington's Public Records Act

O’Neill v. City of Shoreline, 2010 WL 3911347 (Wash. Oct. 7, 2010)

In this case of first impression, and only the second of its kind in the country, the Supreme Court of Washington held that metadata is subject to disclosure pursuant to Washington’s Public Records Act (“PRA”).

On September 14, 2006, Diane Hettick, a private citizen, sent an email to Lisa Thwing, a private citizen, containing criticism of the Shoreline City Council (“the Council”). Thwing forwarded that email to herself and then to Shoreline Deputy Mayor Maggie Fimia and others using the blind carbon copy function. As a result, only Thwing’s name appeared as a recipient to the email. As outlined in the dissent to this case, the email to Fimia was unsolicited and was received “at home on her personal computer.” At a public meeting of the Council, Fimia referred to the email and erroneously identified Beth O’Neill as the author. Ms. O’Neill immediately denied being the author and made an oral request for the email, to which Fimia readily agreed. After returning home, Fimia forwarded the email to her personal address, removing the “to” and “from” lines identifying Thwing, and then forwarded that email to City of Shoreline (“the City”) staff. The email was produced to O’Neill in hard copy. Unsatisfied, O’Neill requested all information relating to the email, including information regarding senders and recipients. The original email was then produced in hard copy. Still unsatisfied, O’Neill requested the attendant metadata. Unfortunately, by that time the original email had apparently been inadvertently deleted, thus rendering the requested information unavailable. Despite the subsequent receipt of yet another version of the email and the metadata extracted from the computer of one of the other, original recipients of the email from Thwing, O’Neill filed suit alleging a violation of the Public Records Act. The trial court found in favor of the City. On appeal, the Court of Appeals held that metadata was subject to disclosure and, more specifically, that the metadata associated with Thwing’s original email to Fimia was subject to disclosure and reversed the trial court. Upon the City’s and Fimia’s appeal, the case went before the Supreme Court.

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Source: ediscoverylaw.com