transcript of sept. 12, 2014 court proceedings
DESCRIPTION
San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Bryan Foster hears final arguments in Pawooskar vs. Redlands Unified School District. During the proceedings he hints at his ruling but says he will make a written ruling because this case sets precedent.TRANSCRIPT
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SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOR THE COUNTY OF SAN BERNARDINO
MAIA PAWOOSKAR, ) )
Plaintiff, ) )
-vs- ) )
REDLANDS UNIFIED SCHOOL ) DISTRICT, )
) Defendant. )
~~~~~~~~~~~~~)
--oOo--
CASE NO. CIVDS1314338
REPORTER'S TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL PROCEEDINGS
BEFORE HON. BRYAN F. FOSTER, JUDGE
DEPARTMENT S35
APPEARANCES:
For the PLAINTIFF:
For the Defendant:
Reported by:
SAN BERNARDINO, CALIFORNIA FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 20 14
BY: KELLY AVILES Attorney at Law
BY: MARK THOMPSON Attorney at Law
LAWANA L. VASQUEZ, CSR, Pro Tempore Reporter CSR No. 12582
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SAN BERNARDINO, CALIFORNIA, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2014
A.M. SESSION
DEPARTMENT S35 HON. BRYAN F. FOSTER, JUDGE
(Lawana L. Vasquez, CSR,
Pro Tempore Reporter, CSR No. 12582.)
-oOo-
( Whereupon the following proceedings were held
in open court:)
THE COURT: No. 1, Pawooskar versus Redlands Unified
10 School District.
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11 MS. AVILES: Good morning, your Honor. Kelly Aviles for
12 Petitioner.
13 MR. THOMPSON: Good morning, your Honor. Mark Thompson
14 for Respondent Redlands Unified. I'm curious if the Court has a
15 tentative.
16 THE COURT: Oh, yeah, I do, but this case is -- I get to
17 make new law. Nobody's ever -- as far as I can see nobody's
18 ever ruled on this, so I'm so empowered.
19 In reviewing this there's a lot of issues involved in
20 it. I'm going to give you a written decision because it is a
21 case of first impression. Somebody might take it up at some
22 point. The appellate court might appreciate if I give them at
23 least what my thoughts are. I don't know if they pay a whole
24 lot of attention on that. It may help.
25 The petitioner in this matter is seeking to obtain or
26 get access to records that are records through the Freedom of
27 Information Act or comparable types of public access to
28 government records. Purpose of those laws are to make
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government transparent. The school d i str ict indicated initially
that they would h ave 1100 -- I think it's like 11,000 pages.
MS. AVILES: 11,000.
THE COURT: And they wanted the petitioner to pay
copying charges of that at 25 cents a page. The petitioner then
indi cates that wel l, we don't want to do that. I don't want to
pay that amount of money. I'll just look at them. And now what
the school district is saying is that's fine but we have to
redact portions of it and as a result we sti ll have to make
copies; therefore, you st ill have to pay us for the copies. To
me that appears to fly in the face of the requirement that the
documents are to be open for public view. There may be some
other objection t o it, but in terms of the general requirement
she has to pay to look at them. I think the responsibility
there are cases that dea l with the responsibili ty to redact fall
within the government entity to do that at their expense and the
p l a int if f can't -- or the petitioner can't be required to pay
for that.
I n addition to t hat, she's not aski ng for copies. She's
just asking to look at it. If you're doing something to protect
the school d i str i ct fr om disc l osure of confidentia l informat i on ,
that's on your dime, not on hers. So it appears to me you can't
do that.
I also -- even though this was not contained in the
moving papers, I do have some problems with the 25 cent per page
amount. Initially it was 10 cents a page for copy and expenses
wh ich seemed appropriate. It appears to me that 25 cents per
page is a -- is an attempt to pass on to anyone asking for
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copies the amounts that will be required to have someone compile
the information to be copied rather than direct copying expenses
which would be basically the person standing there at the
machine and when you pay that for -- to have them feed the
material through the copier and -- or copy service or whatever
other device you use. But the responsibility to compile is the
school district, so the writ of mandate -- tentative is to grant
the writ of mandate. But make your record so we can have a full
record on it.
MR. THOMPSON: Thank you, your Honor. With respect to
the 10 cent charge, it's clear from the documents on record that
the 10 cents charge that was previously charged to this
particular petitioner was under different statutory scheme. The
district has a policy whereby we charge 25 cents a page for
public records access request. They charge 10 cents per page
for parents who are seeking pupil documents under the California
Ed Code. It's a different statutory scheme.
THE COURT: Let me ask you this. What's the rationale
for that. Why under the Freedom of Information Act someone is
entitled to obtain copies of documents and under the caselaw the
only expense that can be passed on would be the copying expense.
How is there a justification that you add another 15 cents per
page to what has already been established as what your actual
cost of duplication is.
MR. THOMPSON : Well, actually, your Honor, that's
petitioner's contention that the cost is 10 -- the cost is
actually 25. There's nothing in the law that prohibits the
district from offering a discounted rate to the people who
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really need access to the school's records and that's the
parents of pupils in the school for the purpose they have the
IEP through special education rights.
The district also has a policy of completely waiving
even the 10 cent charge upon showing of financial hardship.
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None of that goes to prove the actual direct cost of duplication
is only 10 cents. The direct cost of duplication is 25. They
offer discount to the people who really deserve it. Now, the
rationale for that, it's not discriminatory. What we've got is
a completely different statutory scheme that allows parents to
have absolute access, in fact, even without redaction to the
students pupil records. It's a totally different banana.
So when we look at the actual cost of duplication, which
includes the physical cost of printing copies, the paper, the
toner, the maintenance cost, perhaps even the cost of purchasing
the original copier, all of those costs and you add to that the
cost of the clerk or in this case the executive assistant who
must stand there to make the copies. And it's the executive
assistant, your Honor, because we're talking about confidential
documents, attorney/client privilege documents and the like.
That drives the cost up.
THE COURT: Let me stop you for a second and get
clarification on that. As far as the identity of the person or
the station of the person that is actually feeding the copier,
it appears to me when you're dealing with confidential material
and it is a responsibility of the district to redact portions of
it, if you -- by my reasoning if that responsibility is on the
district and not on the -- that burden is not on the back of the
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1 person requesting the records; that under those circumstances it
2 appears to me anything confidential would have already been
3 redacted and therefore the clerk or someone who is a
4 non-executive position could in fact do the manual copying
5 portion of it or have a copy service do it.
6 MR. THOMPSON: The documents don't exist in the office
7 of the district in our redacted state. So a request for a
8 document that truly and legitimately requires redaction such as
9 legal bills, such as student complaints, you have student
10 information, unquestionably redactable, a request for those
11 documents are tantamount to a requirement that the district make
12 a copy. It's a Hobson's choice, and the district would be
13 forced to either --
14 THE COURT: Well, I understand that. I understand the
15 district, in order to redact, may have to make a copy of it. I
16 understand and have to go through the review of those documents
17 to, in fact, figure out what has to be redacted and what doesn't
18 have to be redacted. But as I read the cases, that's the
19 responsibility of the district. It's not the responsibility of
20 the requesting party. I
21 MR. THOMPSON: We absolutely agree that the cost of the
22 time to redact and cost for, say, attorneys to review documents
23 are not recoverable. What is recoverable is the actual cost for
24 making a copy. And where a petitioner or requestor submits a
25 request for 11,000 documents that clearly must be redacted and
26 then she says oh, no, no, no, I don't want to pay for the
27 copies; I get to just inspect them, she's transferring an _,..-----.,
28 incredible cost on the school district whose mission it is to
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educate children, not to facilitate the indrum (phonetic) around
the l egislat i ve mandate that the school district gets reimbursed
for a copy.
THE COURT: Isn' t that something you have to take up
with the legislature rather than the school just imposing the
charges. And doesn't that act as a chil ling effect to -
basical l y it is requiring whoever it is that is requesting
access t o these documents under the law, what they're legally
entit l ed to do; that the law is meant to make it so that they
have -- so the agency has a transparency that the l aw requires
and anything that is necessary to protect confidentiality is the
respons i bility of t he district. It's not on the back of the
person making the requ es t . And if the district feels something
has to be redacted, that's their responsibility and their cost,
not the person who's -- otherwise it's a chill i ng effect and
it's basically saying yo u have to pay to look at these records,
and that I don't think is what the law requi res.
Now, there may be -- there are limitat i ons to that, if
it's unduly burdensome or things of that nature; however, that
has been very narrowly construed, and there is a requirement
also that the district cooperate with the requesting party to
narrow the scope of their request which I don't see has really
been done in this case for t he district to meet and confer and
say hey, look, do you really need all these duplicates; is this
really something that's a dup l icate thing? If we give you this
summary sheet, wouldn't that be enough for you, or do you need
more than that? Those type of things -- you know, to have every
billing record may not be required based on what they 're looking
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for, but there hasn't been any attempt on the part of the
district to meet with them to try to t ailer that.
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MR. THOMPSON: Your Honor, the records were complete
with all the letters back and forth with counsel with the
district continually explaining to the requestor what the
situation was with first of all t he copies and then they need to
inspect without -- or request to inspect without copying, the
cost involved, the redactions involved, the number of letters
involved -- sorry the letters, number of documents involved.
Those letters went back and forth through five iterations before
reques tor's counsel ignored us, stopped responding and instead
filed a petition. At that point as to the access question the
laws -- we agree the laws are written and shall be construed in
favor of access to documents. We agree with that
wholeheartedly. This is not an access issue. There was never
any denial of access here.
THE COURT: But there's a charge for access.
MR. THOMPSON: That's prescribed under the law.
THE COURT: The best prescribed under the law is the
charge for copies, not for access.
Is there anything in the law? I haven't seen it. Maybe
you can point to something that says the district can in fact
charge a fee for someone to have access to view the records.
MR. THOMPSON: In California there's nothing specific
about that, and that's why we 're here before you today. If you
look in other states like North Carolina, they specifically
proscribe that. California can proscribe it as well. What we
have is silence on that issue except for the statement that the
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direct cost of duplication shall be born by the requestor.
We've only asked to be reimbursed for the direct cost of the
duplications that are required due to the nature of the request.
After multiple iterations of attempting to work with the
requestor as required by law, after -- and quite frankly, your
Honor, this whole thing emanates from the petitioner's original
request for one attorney bill that this district doesn't have.
THE COURT: Yeah, that's another issue.
MR. THOMPSON: Well, it goes to the motivation behind
this, and we agree the motives for public records request are
not relevant. But the motives for this requestor to then run
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around the law by saying if I have to pay for copies, well, I'm
going to make you make the copies and only view them, that goes
directly against public policy of open government which is
balanced with the need for the district to do its business which
is educate the children.
THE COURT: One of the problems how I think all this
started is there is a provision, and I'm not sure if it actually
applies. I'll concede that. I'm not sure that under the law
that the district has not fulfilled it's obligation in terms of
discovery in terms of the initial request that was made. I have
some real concerns as to whether or not the district has
fulfilled spirit of the law to cooperate since the information
that was available as to what agency had the document that was
requested was known to the district and not provided to the
requestor. And it appears to me it's gamesmanship basically
saying oh, we don't have it and we're not going to tell you
where it's at. And they don't believe you don't have it because
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of the fact it's attorney bill for work that was done on behalf
of the district.
MR. THOMPSON: Yes, your Honor, but I never dealt with
an agency. There's something in the law that requires us to
explore through another agency.
THE COURT: That may or may not be true.
MR. THOMPSON: I'd ask counsel to stop laughing during
our conversation.
THE COURT: Never mind that. Let's not make facial
expressions.
MS. AVILES: I apologize, your Honor.
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THE COURT: That may or may not be true. The problem we
have with that is that the district has the responsibility to in
fact turn over documents in their position or under their
control; the issue here as to whether or not the district had
control of the documents in question because of the fact that a
representative of the district sits on the board of directors of
the agency that did have the documents. I think that's an
arguable point. I'm not making a ruling on that, but I also
understand the history behind how this all came about.
And I don't think the petitioner is totally free of
culpability in the problems that are ongoing here. I think
there is some vindictiveness on both sides in connection with
this. I feel there's been a failure to cooperate on both sides
in terms of the issues involved in this. But in terms of what
the law requires, in this case I believe that the law requires
that the district provide access to those documents. If the
disctrict feels that the documents have to be altered in some
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1 fashion to protect third parties or confidentiality or things of
2 that nature, that's the district's responsibility. It is not a
3 cost born that is born by the requestor. I guess that's about
4 as simple as I can say it. That's how I view it. Anything else
5 you want to put on the record?
6 MR. THOMPSON: Nothing else on that issue, your Honor.
7 THE COURT: Anything you want to add?
8 MS. AVILES: I agree obviously with your ruling. The
9 one thing I do want to point out when we're talking about the 25
10 cents per page charge, they submitted the declaration but the
11 documents that were provided in discovery show the actual
12 machines that they used, and if you do the math, I mean, it's
13 not anywhere close to 25 cents per page. I'm not even sure it's
.~ 14 5 cents a page. It comes out to a salary of over a million
15 dollars at the rate that copy machines can copy that the
16 district owns. It's just extraordinary, the overcharge that has
17 been billed, even the 10 cents per page for student records
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seems to be well over the actual cost of duplication which has
been more broadly construed than the direct cost of duplication
under the Public Records Act.
THE COURT: Let me go back and reiterate. That was kind
of an aside. It's not part of the ruling in this case because
of the fact that the request under the writ of mandate is for
access to the documents, not for copies of the documents. That
would only apply in copies. My ruling is sustained; that in
fact the cost of any copying in order to redact is born by the
district. Then the amount they're charging someone else is no
longer relevant because you're not asking for copies; you're
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1 only asking for -- that's a different fight for a different day.
2 Let me add one more thing too. And just as kind of a
3 caveat on this is that as far as the redaction is concerned,
4 under federal law there's a requirement for a law as to the
5 basis for redaction. California law is not quite as clear in
6 that regard; however, I believe that it is incumbent on the
7 district to at least provide information as to what the
8 redactions are being made for; in other words, this is a
9 redaction because it's third-party privacy; this is a redaction
1 0 because it is attorney work product or whatever. Whatever the
11 reason that the redaction is made for I think there is a
12 redaction of a document. There's that requirement.
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MR. THOMPSON: And your Honor, may I?
THE COURT: Sure.
MR. THOMPSON: Do I interpret the Court's ruling or
16 intent to rule on that issue that each individual redaction of
17 all 11,000 pages must be identified? That is -- that's not even
18 impractical. That's not even possible.
19 THE COURT: I think it has to be the law as to what you
20 redacted.
21 MR. THOMPSON: There's no such requirement under the
22 law, your Honor.
23 THE COURT: I'm not arguing that right now. I'm just
24 telling you that you have to be able to establish the redactions
25 were done for a legitimate purpose.
26 MR. THOMPSON: The burden will be on the requestor to
27 come back and say we object to redactions that were made.
28 THE COURT: That's for another day. They can object to
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these redactions, but it's -- their has to be some type of
mechanism that the Court can use to determine whether or not the
redactions were legitimate or not. We can't just trust the
entity doing the redactions.
MR. THOMPSON: Under dec larations under penalty
submissions to requestors under the Publi c Records Act must be
trusted. That's the way these things work.
THE COURT: There is a -- there is a presumption that
they were done, but it's a rebuttable presumption. I t's one
where they can establish evidence on it and i f necessary
requires in-camera review of the unredacted documents. I don't
look forward to that, but that's -- that would be something that
at some point we might have a discovery referee take care of
that.
MR. THOMPSON: Yes, your Honor, times 11,000 is the
problem.
THE COURT: Yeah, well --
MR. THOMPSON: In a case where she already had the
documen t she was looking for prior to filing this.
faith.
It's bad
THE COURT: That ' s one o f the things I'm concerned
about, the voluminous nature of the response , and that's why I'm
ordering the part i es to meet and confer o n that to see if
there's a way to limit the amount of records that have to be
produced and meet whatever needs you feel are necessary on t hat
for pet i tioner.
MS. AVILES: Can I -- I just want to make sure that I'm
c l ear on a l l the issues. On that point I wanted to say that
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there is a case on point that talks about whether California
in California a agency has to produce a privileged law in
response to an initial public records request. That first
answer is no, they do not. However, once litigation is filed,
it leaves it to the Court's obvious discretion as to how to
determine whether the redactions were properly made.
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THE COURT: That was the point I'm trying to make, if I
wasn't clear on it. Like I said, I'm not deciding that today.
That would be something that would come up later on. I'm just
advising, and that's why I prefaced it by saying it's kind of
advice. At some point there has to be some type of
justification for the redactions that are made. It may be just
by declaration. It may be as a result of a more detailed
declaration as to give subject matters that are covered in the
redaction. It may require at some point an actual statement as
to each redaction as to what redaction -- why it was redacted.
I'm not making that determination at this point. Obviously
those are different levels of scrutiny it would come under.
There has to be a showing by the petitioner that at least please
the Court in position that feels that type of inquiry is
necessary.
Sometimes you get a redaction that 98 percent of the
page is redacted. You got to kind of tell me why, you know,
that type of stuff. On the other hand, if there's two words
redacted, it's a different situation.
MR. THOMPSON: They asked for nine years of legal bills,
your Honor; nine years of black pages.
THE COURT: That's -- I'm concerned about that, but the
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fact of the matter is that you have to tailer that. I don't
know why nine years is needed.
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MS. AVILES: Can I explain? We don't necessarily need
nine years of detailed legal billing; however, my client
initially expanded her request because they refused to give her
any information about why no legal bills existed which is why
she asked for the contract, why she asked for the legal bills.
We would be happy to work with the district to narrow that to
only include like the summaries. I don't know how they bill,
but a lot of agencies will bill where they have a summary page
in --
THE COURT: Slow down.
MS. AVILES: So we'd be happy to work with them to
narrow those so they're not producing 11,000 pages of
information that is unnecessary for us.
THE COURT: That's what I'm suggesting that you do.
Actually, I'm ordering that you do meet and confer for that
purpose. But in any event, anything else?
MS. AVILES: Yeah, I'm sorry, your Honor, I do have a
couple things I need to make clear. Second, there was some
discussion about us having the burden to prove that the
redactions were necessary under the public records act.
Actually, they expressly have the burden to prove that they were
justified in withholding any material. So I want to make sure
we have that on the record.
THE COURT: Yes and no. Once they do a declaration to
the extent that that is a prima fascia evidence of it, it's not
conclusive but it is evidence that probably fulfills that
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1 responsibility on their part. If they have a declaration from a
2 party doing the redacting as to the reason for the redacting,
3 that's probably sufficient to get into more detail. Then it
4 would be the burden on the petitioner.
5 MS. AVILES: I understand the level of evidence actually
6 required when we got to court wou l d be a question of fact at
7 that point, but I just wanted -- since we're making a record, I
8 wanted to make sure that was clear. It's initially their burden
9 to prove that the records were redacted properly. If it happens
10 to be through a declaration and that seems sufficient, that's
11 fine. We're not saying what evidence they have to use to do
12 that, but I just want to make c lear it is their burden to show
13 that records were properly withheld under the statute.
,.-.... 14 The other thing I wanted to discuss the issue about
15 whether this Court should rule on a 25 cent per page issue.
16 Because it wasn't one of the main issues, we didn't necessarily
17 focus on it, but there was actual l y a third public records
18 request where my c lient was subject to the 25 cent per page
19 copying charge, and she actually did pay that under protest. So
20 she actually has been charged and has had to pay for copies at
21 the exorbitant rate the district has been overcharging to the
22 members of the public. That was also part of the
23 THE COURT: Slow down. Take a breath.
24 MS. AVILES: So that was one of the reasons we included
25 that second cause of action is specifically so the Court can
26 rule on that issue because once my client is able to see what
27 the dis trict is actually providing and can determine which
28 record she actually needed copies of, she will probably be
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requesting copies of those records. So in addition to the fact
she will likely be requesting at least a limited amount of
copies of records from the district and that she has already
been subject to the charge, we were hoping this Court would rule
on the issue of whether 25 cents per page is legally allowable.
I also wanted to note in the North County Parents case which is
the only case that has talked about what allowable charges are
under the Public Records Act, they ruled that 25 cents per page
was not allowable. It was the exact same charge in that case.
THE COURT: In that case the -- in that particular case
the evidence was submitted that 25 cents per page was also the
-- incorporated the expenses of compiling the records and
expenses involved in that. It was detailed in that case as to
exactly what that 25 cents covered.
MS. AVILES: Sure.
THE COURT: I don't have that in this case. I don't
know, maybe our copiers are more expensive to run than they were
in that case.
MS. AVILES: Actually this is more limited. They're
saying the 25 cents
THE COURT: Slow down.
MS. AVILES: Apologize, your Honor. They're saying the
25 cents per page copy does not include that. So it's even more
inflated. If the Court in North County Parents thought that 25
cents per page was too high, even with the cost of redaction and
inspection and searching for records, how could in this case 25
cents actually be the cost.
THE COURT: I don't think that was the ruling of the
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1 Court. It didn't give the ruling saying that was too much for
2 the services rendered. They were saying that that fee included
3 certain services that were not allowed, so therefore, the fee
4 was too high. In this case if they submit evidence that shows
5 -- if that becomes of issue in this case and they submit
6 evidence that shows that is the direct copying expense, I'll
7 consider it. There's a distinction between the two cases or the
8 two situations.
9 MS. AVILES: Actually they have submitted a declaration
10 and that was the only evidence they provided. So that was one
11 of our arguments is that if they have the ability to produce
12 evidence and they don't, then there 's an inference that the
13 evidence would be unfavorable t o them. All they've produced is
r--, 14 a declaration from the superintendent of business services I
,,,.--,
15 believe who said it cost 1 9 cents for the member of staff to do
16 the copying and six cents for the actual cost associated wi th
17 the copier. And so we actually addressed that in our reply
18 brief.
19 So I don't want to take up anymore of the Court's time,
20 but if you're going to issue a written ruling, maybe you can
21 review that particular section because we go into detail about
22 how those cost cannot be accurate.
23 MR. THOMPSON: And, your Honor, the detail is replete
24 with fuzzy math and speculation like should be and likely to.
25 THE COURT: I have question as to whether or not that is
26 even in the request for writ o f mandate in this, but I' ll take a
27 look and see if the request and the petition actually covers
28 copy. My review of it is it only covered access.
,,----..,
18
1 MR. THOMPSON: If the matter comes up, we urge the Court
2 to notice that the statutory fee back in 1975 was 10 cents.
3 There's going to be argument over whether that was the actual
4 cost or direct cost or whatever, but 10 cents in 20 -- 40 years
5 ago compared to 25 cents --
6 THE COURT: Not 10 cents today.
7 MR. THOMPSON: Certainly not 10 cents today and the
8 fuzzy math is used to compare Office Depot and Staples. It has
9 nothing to do with direct cost -- the actual cost or direct cost
10 in Redlands Unified. We have different staff paid different
11 salary rates. We have different equipment operated under a
12 different scheme. We're not a wholesale photocopying
13 business --
14 THE COURT: I understand.
15 MR. THOMPSON: That can take advantage of the economy to
16 scale. It's all just fuzzy math, and this Court should not
17 insert itself in deciding whether 10 cents in 1975 doesn't
18 justify 25 cents in 2014. It's not frivolously unreasonable.
19 THE COURT: I don't read those cases saying this is the
20 value of copying. I read those cases saying those are charges
21 that can be incorporated in the charges. In other words, these
22 are services that can be incorporate in the charges. That's
23 where the distinction is. Like you said, what the value of
24 money was 25 years ago, 30 years ago or 40 years ago is not the
25 same as it is today. So that has to be taken into consideration
26 also.
27 MR. THOMPSON: We urge the Court to not get involved in
28 these mathematical arguments unless the fee on its face is
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clearly unreasonable which it's not.
THE COURT: I'll take a look at that.
MS. AVILES: In the petition in the prayer we
specifically ask for the Court to issue an injunction to prevent
them from charging an excess of the direct cost of duplication.
Our reply briefs, pages seven to nine, specifically address
their copying charges. So I just ask the Court to review that
one more time before issuing an order.
order.
weeks.
THE COURT: Anything else? Anything?
MR. THOMPSON: No, your Honor. Thank you.
MS. AVILES: Thank you, your Honor.
MR. THOMPSON: Approximately when can we anticipate an
THE COURT: Three, four months. No, probably within t wo
(Whereupon an adjournment was taken).
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REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE
MAIA PAWOOSKAR, ) )
Plaintiff, ) )
-vs- ) )
REDLANDS UNIFIED SCHOOL ) DISTRICT, )
) Defendant. )
~~~~~~~~~~)
CAS E NO. CIVDS13 1 4338
I, LAWANA L. VASQUEZ, CSR, Pro Tempore Reporter of the
above - ent i tled court, do hereby certify:
That I am a Cert ifi ed Shorthand Reporter of the State of
California, duly licensed to practice; that I did r eport i n
Stenotype ora l proceedings had upon hearing of the
aforementioned cause at the time and place hereinbefore set
forth; that the foregoing pages numbered 1 through 19,
constitute to the best of my knowledge and bel ief a full, t r ue,
and correct computer - a i ded transcription from my said shorthand
notes so taken for the date of SEPTEMBER 12, 20 1 4.
Dated at SAN BERNARDINO, California, t his 21ST day of
SEPTEMBER, 2014.
Pro Tempore Reporter, CSR No. 1 2582