Fullerton settles lawsuit against bloggers for publishing City Hall documents | Hacker News Reader

Fullerton settles lawsuit against bloggers for publishing City Hall documents

voiceofoc.org

100 pointsus0r18 comments

> Some of the files were later published online, including those of a rogue Fullerton police official who was allowed to resign in a way that would keep her records from being released to the public.

Here is the post from the blog about this: https://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2019/fullerton-police-cut-a...

Cities that shelter and conceal lying cops should be well-known. Add Fullerton to the list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence

"Must return the [digital] documents, which they didn't plan on publishing anyway."

What?

A bunch of confidential documents were accidentally shared by the city via Dropbox, and these bloggers downloaded them.

Some of the documents were newsworthy, and the bloggers published them. Other documents were private but not newsworthy (personnel documents with social security numbers, for example), and the bloggers did not plan to publish them (because they are good people and were not out to destroy innocent public employees). They are agreeing to delete those files.

“Return” in legal parlance means delete when the files are digital copies.

This is my experience as well with contract language; return all files and delete/destroy all copies. With contract work “return” makes a bit more sense, as the other party may not have the most up to date versions of documents I worked on, for example.

This isn't the case here. The City wants the "return" of digital files AND to have them deleted from personal devices.

>“I’m glad we’re getting our documents back,” Barlow said. “That was the entire goal of the litigation.”

Did the bloggers delete the files after they copied them? Otherwise there is no return of the documents.

Legally that’s what’s meant. When I’ve settled a similar case we asked they return all copies of files taken on a USB drive and then affirm that they’ve deleted all copies.

Does deleted mean actually writing bits over the disk contents, or just put them in the trash? What constitutes legal deletion of binary data?

For stuff like this it means making sincere good faith efforts to comply, and likely stipulated in the agreement. Settlement agreements are enforceable, so if the city had any reason to believe they were not deleted in reality, they try would have grounds to recover damages + the $350k (depends on the terms of settlement agreement).

Actually they want both. They want copies of any files we have AND to delete said files. I'd get into why this is insanely stupid but it's bound by the rules of arbitration.

That website blocks European visitors for legal reasons. Archive.org link to get around it: https://web.archive.org/web/20210516204113/https://ktla.com/...

> Our European visitors are important to us

Non-Europeans will be glad to hear this.

Different societies have different standards. Society X could say that the color red is problematic and should never be displayed, and Society Y could have no such rule or any problem with the color red. In that instance it wouldn't be wrong to say that "Our Society X visitors are important to us" and block them from seeing AllTheRedThings.com while still allowing Society Y members to see it.

Better article: https://voiceofoc.org/2021/05/fullerton-settles-lawsuit-agai...

They erroneously made the files public on the city's Dropbox account.

Ok, changed from https://ktla.com/news/local-news/fullerton-to-pay-350k-to-se.... Thanks!

>Fullerton’s attorney, Kimberly Hall Barlow, said the city acted in good faith when it filed its lawsuit in 2019.

>“I’m glad we’re getting our documents back,” Barlow said. “That was the entire goal of the litigation.”

PR Speak fills me with actual rage. Why can't organizations and their agents simply be honest when they are publicly accountable?

Because they aren't publicly accountable. We were at risk of having to pay $300,000+ in legal bills if we lost the anti-SLAPP motion, meanwhile the City of Fullerton paid their attorneys half a million to sue us over their cock-up.

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