Federal Judge Casey Rodgers granted David Bear’s motion for attorney’s fees, $130,425.50, from former County Commissioner Doug Underhill. She ordered the Clerk to enter the final judgment against Underhill on Bear’s Public Records Act claims, ending a four-year saga.
Bear had sued Underhill for his failure to respond to a public records request for records within the commissioner’s custody. Underhill lost the case, entitling Bear to be reimbursed for his legal fees.
Underhill argued that the Court erred in granting Bear the entitlement to fees without holding an evidentiary hearing and expressly finding whether the public records request and civil action were brought for an “improper purpose.”
The commissioner alleged the suit’s improper purpose was Bear wanted to harm him financially, and further discovery was required to determine what fees were actually billed to Bear to avoid duplication. Underhill also wanted the court to reconsider whether he should be personally liable for the fees.
He lost on all those arguments.
According to Judge Rodgers, Underhill should have brought up the improper purpose issue earlier in opposition to Bear’s motion for summary judgment. However, the judge found that the argument lacked merit because Bear’s request was “a genuine search for public records.”
Out of the abundance of caution, Judge Rodgers modified the prior order awarding fees to include “the Court’s express determination pursuant to Fla. Stat. § 119.12(3) that based on the record, neither the public records request nor the suit was filed for an improper or primarily frivolous purpose, and there is no basis for reopening the record.”
Read Underhill Must Pay.
From the ruling:
“The record shows that the request was a genuine search for public records and the suit was filed because Underhill refused to respond to the request for public records that were in his custody.”
It really is that simple. Always has been. The court had to compel him to produce the documents, for cripe’s sake. It doesn’t get any more cut and dry than that.
Keep in mind that this is just ONE instance of him refusing to fulfill public records. He had multiple records of mine he never fulfilled that I logged with the previous State’s Attorney (the investigator on the case suggested I file on him in civil court).
In fact, an internal tracking system Doug had Johnny Boy assigned to caretaking had several requests in the database labelled as “0” level importance.
Four fricking years. He’ll probably appeal to drag it out even further arguing still more Trumpian delusions of grandeur. Hopefully that won’t continue to stall the State case, whose judge was waiting on the federal ruling. Cause, you know, it’s for the same intentional refusal to fulfill public record, only this time with his Nextdoor public record.