April 01, 2009
King County Government's April Fool's Joke on the People of Washington

Seattle Times:

King County has asked the state Supreme Court to vacate a landmark public-records decision issued earlier this year, alleging that Justice Richard Sanders -- who wrote the majority opinion -- "stood to personally gain" from that decision.

The motion, filed this morning, asks the justices to replace Sanders with a temporary justice to rehear the case of Armen Yousoufian, a businessman who sued the county after it delayed releasing documents dealing with the financing of Qwest Field.

Yeah, whatever, dudes.

It makes just as much sense to demand that every justice who happens to pay taxes should recuse themselves from any case involving taxes, etc.

With any luck the county's ace legal team will forget to confirm this hearing too.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 01, 2009 08:13 PM | Email This
Comments
1. Stefan claims, "It makes just as much sense to demand that every justice who happens to pay taxes should recuse themselves from any case involving taxes, etc."

Your analogy is completely flawed. Sanders is suing someone over the same issue that he ruled on in the Yousoufian case. Therefore, that issue is clearly one with an exceptionally high impact on Sanders. By contrast, everyone pays taxes, so being a taxpayer would not be a reason for a particular judge to be recused from a tax case.

A reasonable analogy would be a judge ruling on a tax matter while he was in litigation over the same issue in his personal taxes.

Posted by: Bruce on April 1, 2009 09:51 PM
2. Using Bruce's logic, a judge wouldn't be able to rule on the legality of a parking ticket if he himself had ever challenged a parking ticket.

Why don't you just say, "I love Ron Sims and would fellate him whenever he wanted me to, and anything that might upset him or any of his people is bad, therefore, anything that keeps something from happening that would upset Ron Sims & Crew is good, therefore, Sanders shouldn't Judge the case."

That would at least be honest.

Posted by: The World on April 2, 2009 11:17 AM
3. Ever if the Supreme Court grants a rehearing, I think the Yousoufian ruling's guidelines for reviewing violations of the Public Records Act would stand -- there were 6 votes in favor of the analytical framework Justice Sanders outlined.

http://www.wasupremecourtblog.com/2009/04/articles/petitions-for-review/king-county-asks-the-supreme-court-to-vacate-yousoufian-ruling/

Posted by: Reitz on April 2, 2009 01:05 PM
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