Media Fight Back in Subpoena Case
Lawyers for former USA Today reporter Toni Locy, joined by an array of other media organizations, are challenging the contempt citation and fines imposed against Locy last Friday for refusing to name confidential sources. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton in D.C. said he wanted to force Locy to obey a subpoena and reveal her sources for stories she wrote on the investigation of Steven Hatfill after the 2001 anthrax scare. Walton rejected a stay of the fines, which will escalate to $5,000 a day, and also ruled that Locy could not be reimbursed by anyone for the fines she must pay.
The Walton order is "vastly overbroad" and amounts to a criminal, not civil sanction, according to an emergency motion filed today with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by Locy's lawyer Robert Bernius of Nixon Peabody's D.C. office.
An amicus curiae brief on behalf of major media organizations, authored by Laura Handman of Davis Wright Tremaine's D.C. office, tells the court: "The legal vise in which Toni Locy finds herself today is a nightmare scenario that every reporter at every news organization dreads." The brief calls the Walton order an unprecedented "punitive, financially ruinous order against a journalist merely for asserting constitutional and common law privileges."
Note: Among those signing on to the amicus brief are ALM Media Inc., parent company of Legal Times, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The author of this post is a member of that committee's steering committee.
The amici brief, page 7, footnote 4, references the three D.C. Circuit judges who dissented from rehearing en banc as Judges Rogers, Earhard, and Tatel. Who is "Judge Earhard" -- an error for Judge Merrick Garland?
Posted by: Andy Patterson | March 10, 2008 at 06:20 PM