Florida Supreme Court rulings typically come in batches on a weekly basis.
For more than a year, Curtis Lee has been checking for those decisions just after 11 a.m. each Thursday.
This week, he saw the one he’d long been awaiting.
“It’s been 14 months now,” Lee said Thursday. “I was disappointed up until today.”
What Lee saw when he opened the file: A 5-2 ruling that sided with his stance that the Police and Fire Pension Fund should pay legal fees he’s incurred during a seven-year fight with the fund over public records.
A fight that started with a dispute over $606 in fees.
Lee went to the fund to review public records, but was charged for the fund’s effort in addition to an hourly fee for someone to sit with him while he reviewed documents. Lee said the fees were exorbitant and wrong, so he filed suit.
When a judge in 2014 awarded him $75,600, the fund didn’t pay it — instead it continued to fight.
The Supreme Court ruling essentially affirmed the earlier judgment while ruling that a person doesn’t have to prove a public agency acted unreasonably or in bad faith to be awarded legal fees.
Lee said the $75,600 earlier award, plus 4.5 percent interest accrued, comes to about $83,000.
He sent a letter to the fund director and board members hours after the ruling became public, asking for that amount by the group’s May 20 meeting.
“I was quite happy,” he said after reading through the ruling, although he believes the court also should have approved more for fees during the many appeals.
The court denied that claim, which could have meant another $40,000 to $43,000, estimated Robert Dees, who has represented Lee in the matter since 2010.
Combined with the estimated $400,000 the fund spent defending itself, Lee said the ordeal cost taxpayers about $483,000.
In his Thursday letter to the board, Lee also asks the members to demand those funds be recovered by former fund administrator John Keane and fund counsel Bob Klausner.
Lee contends both breached the fund’s fiduciary duties.
Dees, of Milam Howard Nicandri Dees & Gillam, said he was happy with Thursday’s ruling and said allowing a “good faith” defense in public records violations would be a huge blow to people trying to enforce the law.
If allowed, he said, it would have required those seeking legal fees to prove intent instead of just a situation being right or wrong.
“It would have been a huge loophole for governmental agencies,” Dees said.
The fund could ask for a rehearing on the matter. An email to fund administrator Beth McCague seeking comment was not returned.
The court decision comes on the heels of another important Lee has been involved in.
The 1st District Court of Appeal upheld a 4th Circuit decision that the so-called 30-year pension agreement is void because those negotiations were done in private and thus violated state Sunshine Law.
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