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Teenager Wins Email Suit Against City of Kokomo
An anonymous reader writes "Recently, a 16 year old sued the city of Kokomo, Indiana for access to an email list that he suspected the mayor was mis-using for political purposes. Despite the mayor's refusal to give in, the teenager won the case. The city will have to pay not only for the expensive attorneys they hired, but may have to compensate the 16 year old's pro-bono counsel."
You can't fight city hall! Or rather, you can fight city hall but the universe will implode if you win. Way to go, I never got to see France.
Demented But Determined.
Much worse misusing of lists has occurred in Indiana. Before the national "do not call list" was implemented Indiana had one. Charitable organizations did not have to oblige by this list. But the FOP took it one step further, adding all the names on the "do not call list" to their call list. This undoubtedly led to them getting more than a few unlisted numbers in the process.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
My suggestion for a better headline: "American discovers balls"
Now if only the rest of the country could get around to holding their political leaders accountable for their misdeeds.
Beyond the knee-jerk reaction, which would be "yay for the student, and peoples rights" in my case, I kind of think the city has a point, even if it isn't justified in law. I certainly don't want government institiutions making it easy for people to get such lists out of them, although it should be possible.
Oh no... it's the future.
In this case its more like a bet. If he lost, he got nothing. The boy wouldn't have to pay, no money gained. But if he won, all the lawyers expensives (paralegals, all those billable hours/minutes/seconds) get a value assigned to them, and under the rules of the law, can be paid by the city, which lost. I think.
Kokomo.. didn't the Eagles sing something about that.. or was that somewhere in hawaii?
So he successfully sued the city to give him the email adresses of all people that are on some city mailing list?
So any Spammer can now just request these lists to get free verified addresses?
How is that in the public interest? What laws are the basis for this?
First off, please don't /. my local newspaper. Secondly this is only one of Matt McKillip's blunders. He has commented how he thinks divorce should be illegal in the city of Kokomo, had a "prayer chapel" installed in a Redi-Med type medical center to prevent a bar from being turned into a strip club, given top jobs to campaign contibutors, changed traditionally public meetings to invite only, etc ...
Really, he is the worst mayor we have had here for quite a while. Delphi and Chrysler, Kokomo's top employers have both recently laid off people. Kokomo is on a downfall and MAtt McKillip isn't helping it.
"City officials turned down Nees, saying the teen could come in and hand-copy the list. Officials said giving out copies of address lists would leave the newsletter subscribers open to spam and computer viruses."
I know it would've been a major pain to hand copy, but if this was a real effort by the teen to research and uncover abuse, why not just copy them down? I mean this has taken over a year now. He could have hand copied them and been done with it long before now.
"Murray said the law, which restricts access to mailing addresses, doesn't extend to e-mail addresses..."
This tells me that the City wasn't asking the teen to hand copy the addresses just to be jerks about it. They were applying an existing law for mailing addresses to email addresses. Seems reasonable to me.
"Groth took the case on a pro-bono basis, but Murray asked for an accounting of Groth's fees in her ruling. Groth said Tuesday it's likely he could bill several thousand dollars for the case."
Before we attack the bloodsucking lawyer, the compensation for the pro-bono part of this was the judges idea. This goes to show that we probably need some way of reeling in some of these justices. I mean, it's one thing if she wants to pay this lawyer out of her pocket, but she just imposed a huge bill on the tax payers of that city to pay someone who was fine doing this for free (free meaning the publicity).
Do what is right and let the consequence follow
Aruba, Jamaica
Ooh I wanna take ya
To Bermuda, Bahama
Come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego
Baby why don't we go
Ooh I wanna take you down to Kokomo
We'll get there fast
And then we'll take it slow
That's where we wanna go
Way down to Kokomo
I think I need more coffee this morning. And maybe a lobotomy so I can forget the late 80s/early 90s once and for all. The booze doesn't seem to be working.
(Two cymbals and a snare drum fall down a canyon.)
Frankly, I'm surprised the city tried to contest this at all.
Aside from the Freedom of Information Act, I could think of a ton of good reasons why this kid should get this or why anyone should be able to get a list like this. Whatever happened to the good old days where we were encouraged to snail mail every single person representing us in office?
When I was younger, I was pretty dissatisfied with the insane food prices at my high school. Even worse was the fact that my parents were making me pay for my own food. So I threatened the school with the Freedom of Information Act and demanded to see all food related reciepts and documents including pay and taxes. They gave me two huge boxes full of crap and I spent one night sorting through everything. And, surprisingly enough, after I sorted through and found out how much they were paying Arrowmark or whoever the food service provider was--it just didn't make sense. The local grocery store had better prices.
My work here is dung.
"Pro bono" on the other hand is short for pro bono publicum -- "for the good of the public".
It's a quaint idea, doing something because it's the right thing to do. I don't doubt that increased notoriety is an incentive for pro bono work, although many pro bono cases are ones that will never garner much attention. In this case, I think the judge was eager to punish the defendant, and ordered the pro bono attorney's fees calculated so he'd have an excuse for making the punishment heavier.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
After reading TFA, is seems to me the whole thing was about who gets to be lazy. The city officials said that he could have the list, but he had to hand copy it himself. He sued to get them to just give him a copy of the list, and compensate his lawyer.
I can sort of see his point. He was comparing two lists: a city newsletter, and one the mayor was using to build up political support. If he hand copied it, they could alway say he made a mistake or changed it, there would be no tracability. But an actual, official copy couldn't be denied. Now I understand why the mayor didn't want to give it out. It was a case of CYA.
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
Ok, ok, I didn't think the result was really that important but ...
I was working with three other guys to try and figure out what suggestions to make. And also let me say that this was a high school (not a gradeschool) and there were some insanely pricey healthy foods but super cheap candy and twinkies as you went up to the cash register.
We contacted Hy-Vee (our local grocery store) and asked them how difficult (and how expensive) it would be to make regular shipments of real fruit and real food to the cafeteria. It turned out to be quite a bit cheaper than shipping it 3 hours from the nearest metropolis--imagine that!
So when we approached them with this idea, they said it wasn't that simple. That they had contracts with their distributor and they couldn't break them--which was strange because they could bring in Dominos pizza every friday.
So, in the end, they made token price adjustments on the foods to make everyone happy. A nickel here, a dime there. But the prices kept going up until they were eventually were higher than they were before. They blame that on inflation. Then I graduated and just kind of accepted that crap like that happens in hick towns like the one where I grew up.
My work here is dung.
actually, it's "pro bono publico"-- since the adjective (publico) modifies the object (bono) of the preposition (pro), it must agree in case (in this case, ablative).
I might not know a lick about C syntax, but I can certainly remember my Latin....
This isn't the first round between McKillip and Nees. Nees had previously created a documentary film about McKillip entitled Words of Sedition: how the highest levels of power shut down free speech in Kokomo.
You can find more info on this case from when it was filed in this Indianapolis Star article.
You can also read more about it on Nees' personal website.
You can watch Words of Sedition online as well.
Ego, ex mea parte, saluto dominos nostros novos grammaticos!
Brian is writing a slogan on a wall, oblivious to the Roman patrol approaching from behind. The slogan is "ROMANES EUNT DOMUS".
...? ...?
... imperative.
...? ... the locative, sir!
..."-MUM". Understand?
Centurion: What's this thing? "ROMANES EUNT DOMUS"? "People called Romanes they go the house?"
Brian: It... it says "Romans go home".
Centurion: No it doesn't. What's Latin for "Roman"?
Brian hesitates
Centurion: Come on, come on!
Brian: (uncertain) "ROMANUS".
Centurion: Goes like?
Brian: "-ANUS".
Centurion: Vocative plural of "-ANUS" is?
Brian: "-ANI".
Centurion: (takes paintbrush from Brian and paints over) "RO-MA-NI". "EUNT"? What is "EUNT"?
Brian: "Go".
Centurion: Conjugate the verb "to go"!
Brian: "IRE". "EO", "IS", "IT", "IMUS", "ITIS", "EUNT".
Centurion: So "EUNT" is
Brian: Third person plural present indicative, "they go".
Centurion: But "Romans, go home!" is an order, so you must use the
He lifts Brian by his short hairs
Brian: The
Centurion: Which is?
Brian: Um, oh, oh, "I", "I"!
Centurion: How many Romans? (pulls harder)
Brian: Plural, plural! "ITE".
Centurion strikes over "EUNT" and paints "ITE" on the wall
Centurion: "I-TE". "DOMUS"? Nominative? "Go home", this is motion towards, isn't it, boy?
Brian: (very anxious) Dative?
Centurion draws his sword and holds it to Brian's throat
Brian: Ahh! No, ablative, ablative, sir. No, the, accusative, accusative, ah, DOMUM, sir.
Centurion: Except that "DOMUS" takes the
Brian:
Centurion: Which is?
Brian: "DOMUM".
Centurion: (satisfied) "DOMUM"...
He strikes out "DOMUS" and writes "DOMUM"
Centurian:
Brian: Yes sir.
Centurion: Now write it down a hundred times.
Brian: Yes sir, thank you sir, hail Caesar, sir.
Centurion: (saluting) Hail Caesar. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.
Brian: (very relieved) Oh thank you sir, thank you sir, hail Caesar and everything, sir!
michael greene
I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!!
Now, git off my lawn!
sudo eat my shorts