Hawaii, like many other jurisdictions, has an open records law. Here, we call it "UIPA" ("yoo-pah" or "wee-pah") becuase the statute is the Uniform Information Practices Act, and not "FOIA" or "FOIL." But in substance, it's mostly the same as our sibling jurisdictions: government records are strongly presumed to be public documents, available to the public upon request. And like many jurisdictions, Hawaii's UIPA contains a fee-shifting requirement which provides that a complainant who prevails in litigation is entitled to recover attorneys fees and court costs from an agency which wrongly kept documents secret.
Last week, the Hawaii Supreme Court agreed to review a case about UIPA and the fees and costs incurred by a prevailing complainant while on appeal. Specifically, the case is about the timing of the request for appellate fees and costs. We represent the petitioner in the case, and so won't be saying much of anything about it here. But the cert briefs are public documents, so colleague Rebecca Copeland has posted them and a short summary of the issues over at her blog, Record on Appeal. See Writ to Watch: Oahu Publications, Inc. v. Abercrombie.
We posted the briefs in the merits phase of the ICA appeal here ("HAWICA: Attorneys Fee Award In JSC List Case Was Reasonable").
We'll let you know when the Hawaii Supreme Court issues a decision in the case.
