Tenacity could pay off big for stadium critic

For five years now, Armen Yousoufian has been fighting King County for documents about the controversial construction of Seahawks Stadium and the demolition of the Kingdome.

And for five years now, King County officials have been fighting back, saying they did their best to fill his many public-disclosure requests for documents that Yousoufian, who owns a University District hotel, believes show that the people of King County were ripped off.

In 2001 Yousoufian even won a $100,000 lawsuit against the county for its failure to fulfill his requests. But he didn't believe that was enough.

This week, a state appeals court agreed, saying the county's brush-offs and delays of the private citizen's requests for access showed "a lack of good faith" and an "egregious mishandling" of public-access laws. The ruling could potentially cost the county more than $500,000 in penalties — payable to Yousoufian himself.

King County officials yesterday said they were uncertain whether to appeal the ruling, though they still insisted they put forth their best effort at the time. And yet Yousoufian, still unsatisfied, might appeal his victory to the state Supreme Court because he believes the county ought to pay still more for its failures.

"I'm really not happy about this decision," he said. "The (financial) damages are the least of my concerns. I still don't have the documents."

But the appeals court found he had received all the relevant documents.

King County Executive Ron Sims' spokeswoman, Elaine Kraft, said that since Sims took office, he has implemented strict procedures to ensure public-records requests are handled properly in the future.

"We've been working on the process for about four years to ensure we can respond in as thorough a manner as possible," Kraft said. As for the problems with Yousoufian's request, she said, "I think at the time we thought we had responded in as full a manner as possible."

'I was skeptical'

It all started in early 1997, when Yousoufian, who owns University Plaza Hotel, heard county officials touting the idea of the new outdoor football stadium.

The Kingdome was still standing then, and a new football arena was just a sketch on an architect's drawing board. But it was proving a tough sell to taxpayers, many of whom felt stung by the construction of Safeco Field despite the voters' rejection of the project. In a special election later that year, voters narrowly approved building Seahawks Stadium.

But the officials said the new gridiron would be a boon to business and that there were studies to prove it.

Yousoufian, the hotelier, thought that if that was true, "I should have been jumping up and down for joy," he said yesterday. "But I was skeptical. So I thought maybe there's something I don't know. If there are studies, I wanted to see them."

So in May 1997, Yousoufian filed a request with county officials under the state's Open Public Records Act, asking for the studies and other documents relating to the stadium plan.

To Yousoufian, it seemed pretty reasonable and routine. The law was adopted three decades ago so ordinary citizens can keep tabs on government. The Seahawks project was certainly in the public interest, Yousoufian believed, so the documents should have been quickly turned over.

That's not what happened — far from it.

About a week after Yousoufian's first request, the county allowed him to inspect a few documents. But he knew there were more, and he wrote the county saying so.

"I got stonewalled," Yousoufian said. "I said, 'You're not going to do this to me. I have the time, the ability and the inclination to write another letter.' "

And so he did — over and over and over again, for the rest of 1997, into 1998 and beyond. And still he didn't get the documents he requested.

Yousoufian did not relent. When he heard Sims on a radio talk show, Yousoufian called and debated him on air. He met for hours with other people who were skeptical of the plan.

"I think the public's been ripped off," he said. "I believe I've got evidence of that."

The Public Records Act provides that citizens can sue local governments that fail to reveal requested documents not exempt from disclosure, and the law includes provisions for attorneys fees and fines if the government loses.

Looking for legal help

After the county wrote him insisting there were no more documents, Yousoufian tried to find a lawyer.

"Right off the bat they said, 'Armen, I can't sue Ron Sims, he's a friend,' " Yousoufian recalled. "They said, 'Armen, what makes you think there are more documents?' "

Finally, David J. Balint and Michael G. Brannan, two Seattle lawyers, agreed to take Yousoufian's case.

"The county continually said you have all the documents," Brannan recalled yesterday. "We filed a lawsuit ... and lo and behold, (the county) had more documents. Then their lawyer said in open court there were no more documents. And we got more after that."

After a trial in 2001, King County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Learned sided with Yousoufian. According to court records, the county's lawyers claimed to have made a "generous effort" and spent "hundreds of hours of staff time" filling Yousoufian's requests.

Learned ruled the delays in providing Yousoufian the records were "egregious" and caused by negligence, poor communication and a lack of diligence.

All told, the trial court found, it had taken the county 1,463 days — more than four years — to provide the last of the documents Yousoufian eventually received. But since he had requested many documents, which were turned over at various points over the years, the number of days was multiplied many times over, until the court finally decided the county should be penalized for being 5,090 days late in providing all the documents. It assessed the minimum penalty, $5 a day, for a total of $25,440 — plus $82,196 for his attorneys.

Yet Yousoufian was unsatisfied. So he appealed the penalty to the state appeals court that made its ruling this week.

The appeals court didn't set a monetary amount on the penalty the county should pay. But it has ordered a new county Superior Court judge — Learned has since retired — to review the case again and assess higher penalties because of the county's "grossly negligent" handling of the requests.

The maximum penalty the trial court could award is $100 per day, making Yousoufian's possible total $509,000. It's more likely the court will find a penalty much lower than that, though. But the appeals court also instructed the lower court to award his lawyers fees for the cost of the appeal, which Brannan estimated at around $50,000.

But Yousoufian says he believes the law calls for penalties of $5 to $100 per document per day, which would multiply the potential penalties nearly tenfold. That's why he and his lawyers are considering appealing that issue to the state Supreme Court.

"We want to send a message to agencies," Brannan said. "If it costs one agency a lot of money, they'll get the point."

Maureen O'Hagan: 206-464-2562 or mohagan@seattletimes.com.