Judges disobeyed law in sealing cases
SEATTLE – The state’s largest newspaper is launching a campaign to unseal hundreds of King County court cases, following an investigation that showed judges often fail to follow rules in sealing lawsuits.
The Seattle Times said that beginning Monday, it will file motions to unseal the cases, many of which could be of critical public interest.
The announcement accompanied a report that King County judges often seal documents or entire case files if the parties to the lawsuit agree to it, rather than by requiring the parties to show “compelling circumstances.” In many cases, the judges fail to explain why the case is being sealed, as the state Supreme Court requires, the Times said.
The state does not track sealed cases and documents, making them difficult to find. With help from the state Administrative Office of the Courts, the Times used computer searches to locate 420 civil cases that have been sealed in their entirety since 1990. The Times did not include criminal cases, divorces, adoptions or probate matters. Nor did it include cases sealed in part; it stopped counting those at more than 1,000.
The sealing orders in at least 97 percent of those cases disregard rules set down by the Washington Supreme Court in the 1980s. Judges routinely sealed files while offering little or no explanation, applied the lesser legal standard of “good cause” or no legal standard at all, and failed to acknowledge, much less weigh, the public interest in open court proceedings.
The Times said that as a result of its reporting, judges unsealed two cases last month. One was a malpractice lawsuit against former lawyer and current King County District Court Judge Richard Bathum. It said Bathum had been “gravely and seriously negligent” in one of the last cases he handled before being appointed to the bench. Bathum’s lawyer asked Judge Dean Lum to seal the case, because Bathum was now a sitting judge and the lawsuit “would cast him in a false light.”
Lum agreed, sealing the case with a one-sentence order that failed to say why the case was being sealed. Lum unsealed the case when questioned by the Times.
The other case concerns an Enumclaw doctor named Luther Frerichs, who is facing three medical malpractice lawsuits that have been sealed. Judge Richard Eadie unsealed one of those cases last week, alleging that Frerichs was negligent in his supervision of a physician assistant. That case was settled in 1999 and sealed because there was “no legitimate public interest” in it. Turns out, several other women have accused that physician assistant of inducing false memories of sexual abuse.
One case that was marked sealed, but accidentally left unsealed in the court’s computer system: In 1995, a young man sued Donald Sidwell, an aerospace worker with “top secret” security clearance. The man accused Sidwell of sexual abuse; Sidwell agreed to pay $212,000. Sidwell managed to get the entire case sealed on the grounds that if it became publicized, he might lose his job and be unable to pay the settlement.