verdicts-and-settlements-article

Taha v. County of Bucks

$67M Verdict

Date of Verdict: May 28.

Court and Case No.: U.S. Dist. Court E.D. Pa. No. 12-06867.

Judge: Wendy Beetlestone.

Type of Action: Violation of  Criminal History Records Information Act.

Injuries: Private information leaked.

Plaintiffs Counsel: Theodore Schaer, Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy; Jonathan Shub, Robert J. LaRocca, Zahra R. Dean and Aarthi Manohar, Kohn Swift & Graf; Alan Denenberg of Abramson & Denenberg.

Defense Counsel: Frank Chernak, Brett Waldron and Erin Clarke, Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads and Burt Rublin of Ballard Spahr.

Comment:

Bucks County could be on the hook for up to $67 million in punitive damages after a federal jury found it violated the Criminal History Records Information Act by publishing the criminal records of 67,000 people on the web.

The class action lawsuit filed against the county secured $1,000 in punitive damages for each of the 67,000 plaintiffs sent to county jail from 1938 to 2013. The jury held that Bucks County ran afoul of the CHRIA by making the names retrievable through an “inmate lookup tool” through the county's “Offender Management System” from 2011 to 2013.

The case was initiated by plaintiff Daryoush Taha, who was arrested in 1998 by Bensalem police on charges of harassment, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. According to his court papers, the charges were dropped and his record was expunged.

However, in 2011 the information surrounding his arrest became publicly available through the search tool, and contained everything from his physical attributes and the charges he faced to his marital status and housing information.

Taha's lawyer, Theodore Schaer of Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy, indicated in a statement issued that the case would be informative in shaping privacy policies at the municipal level.

“Residents have the right to expect local governments to follow the law and protect their privacy,” Schaer said. “This case establishes a new precedent in the disclosure of information by local governments.”

The class members alleged that prison officials willfully disregarded the rights of the plaintiffs in three ways:

“First, the training received by the persons responsible for implementing the ILT instructed them that the information being disseminated to the public on the ILT was CHRI in violation of the substantive provision of the act,” the plaintiffs' pretrial memorandum said.

“Second, Bucks was reckless in failing to take certain basic precautions before implementing the ILT, such as reviewing the authoritative Pennsylvania Attorney General's Handbook on CHRIA, which defined CHRI as the type of information made public on the ILT; calling the Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Law Enforcement Assistance Network hotline to resolve 'any doubt as to the propriety of information to be released'; and seeking legal advice from the Bucks County solicitor, or any attorney,” court papers continued.

“Third, the dissemination on the internet of CHRI directly violated Bucks general policy concerning maintaining confidentiality of commitment records, and warnings from the Office of the District Attorney of Bucks County regarding publication of mugshots. Bucks understood that the purpose of the CHRIA was to ensure the confidentiality of CHRI, and that disseminating this information to the public could destroy reputations, stigmatize individuals and violate an individual's right to privacy.”

In its court papers, the county denied it willfully violated the act, arguing that corrections officials saw the implementation of the look-up tool as reasonable.

“Thus, the county did not implement the tool with reckless disregard or indifference, and as a result, plaintiff cannot demonstrate that the county willfully violated CHRIA,” court papers said.

In a statement, the Bucks County commissioners called the verdict “extremely disappointing.”

—P.J. D'Annunzio, of the Law Weekly