Staff Report
After a two day trial, a Bossier Parish judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against the City of Bossier City and councilman at large David Montgomery alleging that the city and the councilman had failed to respond to a request for public records. The lawsuit was filed by Weston Merriott, a former Bossier City Police officer and current editor of Sobo.live, a media website focusing on sports and issues of interest to residents of South Bossier.
Merriott’s lawsuit filed in Bossier Parish District Court on January 24th claimed that the city and Councilman-at-Large Montgomery had failed to provide certain records Merriott had requested late last year. The action further alleged that Bossier City routinely engaged in a pattern of failing to respond to pubic records requests going so far as to claim that the city even ignored some requests. At trial, however, it was proven that the city had answered sixty-one (61) separate requests by Merriott since just last August and that none of his requests remained unanswered.
At the heart of the dispute was a request for phone records and email records sent to the city in December of last year. Merriott claimed the city had ignored the request and filed suit seeking a court order to force Bossier City to respond. The suit sought monetary damages and attorney fees and costs to be assessed against the city for the alleged failure to respond. Merriott would learn within days of his filing that the records had in fact been provided to him through his attorneys with the Tulane First Amendment Law Clinic. As was proven at the trail, the city had sent the requested records to the lawyers at Tulane on January 17th, a week before the suit was filed. Merriott’s lawyers claimed that the email had been quarantined on the Tulane email server. But even after learning that his suit was unfounded and that Bossier City had actually provided the records to his legal counsel, Merriott still refused to dismiss his lawsuit. After taking testimony and evidence, Judge Allie Aiello Stahl granted the city’s request that the action be dismissed and further imposed a sanction against Merriott in the amount of $500.00 for his action in persisting in the lawsuit even when he knew the responses had been timely provided to him by Bossier City.
“It is unfortunate that so much time had to be spent defending against this lawsuit but when litigation is initiated against the city seeking monetary damages we have no other option than to defend the city’s position. We are pleased that the court recognized that the filing was completely without merit and went so far as to impose sanctions against the filer to discourage future frivolous filings.” said Assistant City Attorney Richard Ray who testified at trial as to the actions taken by the city to respond to Merriott’s requests.