Opinion ID: 2634685
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Controversy Exemption

Text: The City argues that the trial court erred in determining that the controversy exemption does not apply to the light rail documents. The trial court determined that applying the controversy exemption was unnecessary because the City failed to establish that litigation was reasonably likely. The controversy exemption is contained within the PDA and exempts from disclosure those [r]ecords which are relevant to a controversy to which an agency is a party but which records would not be available to another party under the rules of pretrial discovery for causes pending in the superior courts. RCW 42.17.310(1)(j). In Dawson v. Daly, 120 Wash.2d 782, 791, 845 P.2d 995 (1993), we defined the phrase relevant to a controversy as completed, existing, or reasonably anticipated litigation. We declined to define this phrase as a `prolonged public dispute, debate or contention' concluding that such a definition would violate the PDA's requirement that exemptions are construed narrowly. Id. at 790, 845 P.2d 995; see RCW 42.17.251 (The public records subdivision of this chapter shall be liberally construed and its exemptions narrowly construed....). The City contends that the light rail documents were created in reasonable anticipation of litigation because there was a litigation-charged atmosphere at the time they were created. City's Opening Br. at 43. The City has, however, failed to establish that there was any threat or reasonable anticipation of litigation concerning the enactment of CB 113100. Indeed, a litigation-charged atmosphere is more analogous to the definition of relevant to a controversy that we rejected in Dawson than it is to the definition we adopted in that case. We hold, therefore, that the trial court did not err in determining that the light rail documents were not exempt under RCW 42.17.310(1)(j).