2aHawaii
General Topics => General Discussion => Topic started by: changemyoil66 on March 30, 2022, 11:32:32 AM
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https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/03/smith-wesson-sues-hawaii-over-the-high-cost-of-public-records/?fbclid=IwAR0v7cqMXM_8CXLzvQs2zTJ8Ya9zPbopMrud3Kt9G0NJ7r_Lenw4eWrmrWQ
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https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/03/smith-wesson-sues-hawaii-over-the-high-cost-of-public-records/?fbclid=IwAR0v7cqMXM_8CXLzvQs2zTJ8Ya9zPbopMrud3Kt9G0NJ7r_Lenw4eWrmrWQ
From the article
"Hawaii has some of the strongest gun laws in the country"
should read "Hawaii has the most un-Constitutional and oppressive gun laws in the country"
I've been banned from CB or I would comment over there also.
:grrr:
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I've been banned from CB or I would comment over there also.
:grrr:
Get an email account with aliases
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Records request problems from government is a problem, not just Hawaii. Redactions are supposed to be limited, but agencies will go beyond the call to keep things secret using any excuse they can. Our FBI Rapback information request from the FBI wasn't much better than this.
(https://i.imgur.com/PQe1Mvc.jpg)
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From the article
"Hawaii has some of the strongest gun laws in the country"
should read "Hawaii has the most un-Constitutional and oppressive gun laws in the country"
I've been banned from CB or I would comment over there also.
:grrr:
Not very civil of them, huh? :geekdanc:
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Not very civil of them, huh? :geekdanc:
More accurately they should be "DB".
With a picture of My Donkey as a background.
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https://youtu.be/rKP60mlL5XQ
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I've been banned from CB or I would comment over there also.
:grrr:
I think I would wear that ban as a badge of honor :) :) :)
Have not been banned myself, but my comments pointedly not printed from time to time.
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I didn't really understand what case S&W was trying to make. Is there more backstory to this type of lawsuit?
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I didn't really understand what case S&W was trying to make. Is there more backstory to this type of lawsuit?
The article states the issue.
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The article states the issue.
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Not really, unless I am developing blind spots.
Best I could find is this
"In 2020, a third-party agency called Cogency Global filed three records requests on behalf of Smith & Wesson. The first request asked for communications between the department and the Firearms Accountability Counsel Task Force, a coalition of law firms that seek to prevent gun violence."
Not really much in the way of detail. Says what they want but not really what case they are trying to make in Hawaii.
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Not really, unless I am developing blind spots.
Best I could find is this
"In 2020, a third-party agency called Cogency Global filed three records requests on behalf of Smith & Wesson. The first request asked for communications between the department and the Firearms Accountability Counsel Task Force, a coalition of law firms that seek to prevent gun violence."
Not really much in the way of detail. Says what they want but not really what case they are trying to make in Hawaii.
$
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$
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Well duh, but how?
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Well duh, but how?
$, it states it.
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$, it states it.
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I mean what would the documents they requested prove?
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I mean what would the documents they requested prove?
In 2020, a third-party agency called Cogency Global filed three records requests on behalf of Smith & Wesson. The first request asked for communications between the department and the Firearms Accountability Counsel Task Force, a coalition of law firms that seek to prevent gun violence. The company also requested a handful of requests for proposals that the AG’s office issued related to firearms issues. The third request was for a log of all records requests made to the AG’s office.
The AG’s office denied some of those records, claiming that disclosure would frustrate a legitimate government function, according to the lawsuit. For the records that could be released, the AG’s office wanted nearly $23,000.
The office said it needed hundreds of hours to review and segregate those records. For just the RFP request, it charged Smith & Wesson $2.50 for every 15 minutes spent searching for records and $5 for every 15 minutes spent reviewing those documents.
The AG’s office asked for half of the total fees, about $12,000, before the records could be released.
In July 2021, the gun company sent a second, narrower request in an effort to reduce costs. Instead, the AG’s office set a higher estimate of $27,000 to search for the records and review them.
Portnoy said the company wants the state to provide a realistic number for the actual amount of time it would take the AG’s office to fill the records request.
“In Smith & Wesson’s view, what the state is trying to do is discourage the production (of documents),” Portnoy said.
The gun manufacturer says in the lawsuit that it believes the AG’s refusal to disclose records is politically motivated. Hawaii has some of the strongest gun laws in the country, and companies like Smith & Wesson have challenged those laws in other states in the past.
In December, Smith & Wesson joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn a New York law that would allow victims of gun violence to sue the gun industry. The company is also fighting a probe from the state of New Jersey seeking internal documents.
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I mean what would the documents they requested prove?
Why do you ask? Would your opinion on the matter make some sort of difference?
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Why do you ask? Would your opinion on the matter make some sort of difference?
I don't seek to give an opinion, this is pure curiosity. Are they just fishing to see what they find or do they have something specific they are trying to prove and get compensation or policy change through the courts?
The article doesn't get into enough specifics to indicate what type of argument S&W is trying to make leaving the reader only to guess at whether there is a solid case or just trying to make things difficult.
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I don't seek to give an opinion, this is pure curiosity. Are they just fishing to see what they find or do they have something specific they are trying to prove and get compensation or policy change through the courts?
The article doesn't get into enough specifics to indicate what type of argument S&W is trying to make leaving the reader only to guess at whether there is a solid case or just trying to make things difficult.
It does.
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I don't seek to give an opinion, this is pure curiosity. Are they just fishing to see what they find or do they have something specific they are trying to prove and get compensation or policy change through the courts?
The article doesn't get into enough specifics to indicate what type of argument S&W is trying to make leaving the reader only to guess at whether there is a solid case or just trying to make things difficult.
it's not that complicated:
1. The state makes restrictive laws re: guns
2. Anyone wanting to challenge these gun laws requires documentation that only the state can provide
3. The state gives you an outrageous bill for providing said documents
4. If there's no way to directly recoup the cost of that document request, it can discourage people who can barely afford a lawyer from bringing lawsuits pertaining to bad gun laws.
It's a financial firewall against lawsuits. WHY S&W is requesting the documents should not enter into the inflated cost estimate for producing the information. It should be the same for a high school social science project as it is for a gun manufacturer seeking the same data.
In today's electronic data world of miracles performed by computers, I find it unimaginable that they need lawyers charging $27K for information that is "publicly available."
The AG’s office wanted as much as $27,000 for the records requested by the gun
manufacturer and said it would take attorneys hundreds of hours to complete the
request, the company says in a civil lawsuit filed Monday. The lawsuit says Smith &
Wesson filed similar records requests in other states, but has not faced the same
barriers to access.
“It appears to the client and it appears to us that the amount of time the state is
claiming, and therefore the amount of fees, is an effort to discourage the public
records request,” attorney Jeff Portnoy, who is representing Smith & Wesson, said.
Sounds pretty cut and dried to me.
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it's not that complicated:
1. The state makes restrictive laws re: guns
2. Anyone wanting to challenge these gun laws requires documentation that only the state can provide
3. The state gives you an outrageous bill for providing said documents
4. If there's no way to directly recoup the cost of that document request, it can discourage people who can barely afford a lawyer from bringing lawsuits pertaining to bad gun laws.
It's a financial firewall against lawsuits. WHY S&W is requesting the documents should not enter into the inflated cost estimate for producing the information. It should be the same for a high school social science project as it is for a gun manufacturer seeking the same data.
In today's electronic data world of miracles performed by computers, I find it unimaginable that they need lawyers charging $27K for information that is "publicly available."
Sounds pretty cut and dried to me.
Wait, how do u know all of this? Its like u read the article.
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Wait, how do u know all of this? Its like u read the article.
It's a knack.
:thumbsup: :geekdanc: :rofl:
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it's not that complicated:
1. The state makes restrictive laws re: guns
2. Anyone wanting to challenge these gun laws requires documentation that only the state can provide
3. The state gives you an outrageous bill for providing said documents
4. If there's no way to directly recoup the cost of that document request, it can discourage people who can barely afford a lawyer from bringing lawsuits pertaining to bad gun laws.
It's a financial firewall against lawsuits. WHY S&W is requesting the documents should not enter into the inflated cost estimate for producing the information. It should be the same for a high school social science project as it is for a gun manufacturer seeking the same data.
Yeah, I get all that. I am curious what information they expect to find in the documents that will help them make some sort of case.
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Yeah, I get all that. I am curious what information they expect to find in the documents that will help them make some sort of case.
Who knows. Even HIFICO's FOIA request had about 1000 pages of which, 98% of them were redacted. But what we did learn is that per the FBI, no one is enrolled in their RAPBACK system. And for the 1000 pages, HIFICO paid for each one.