The Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday grappled with the realities of the computer age as it weighed the question of when a “deleted” public record becomes a “destroyed” public record.
At issue is a lawsuit by The Blade seeking to force the Seneca County commissioners to hire a forensic computer expert at county expense to recover deleted e-mails from an 18-month period, some of which the newspaper contends may contain illegal private communications related to the proposed razing of the county’s historic courthouse.
“We’re talking about a very finite amount of time here, and we’re talking about e-mails from two or three people to one another,” said Justice Maureen O’Connor. “It just doesn’t seem to me to be that overwhelmingly burdensome or such a huge task here for the county to not even attempt to comply.”
Fritz Byers, The Blade’s attorney, told the court that the newspaper made a request under the Ohio Public Records Law seeking all e-mails sent, received, or deleted for an 18-month period beginning Jan. 1, 2006. The county provided a “smattering” of e-mails initially, he said, but then, after the paper sued, the county produced 700-plus pages of additional e-mails.
He noted that the commissioners have admitted that some records were deleted.
“If the court doesn’t rule fully in our favor, then it will mean that any official will be able to legally cover his tracks and misdeeds by a simple click on the computer's delete button,” said John Robinson Block, The Blade’s co-publisher and editor-in-chief.
