Earlier this month, a federal district court in Pennsylvania rejected an attempt to block the press and public from accessing a settlement agreement a Williamsport police officer reached with other police officers he accused of retaliating against him for participating in union activities.
The court concluded that the agreement is not confidential, siding with arguments made by attorneys for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxwell, and Hippel LLP, who represented The Patriot-News/PennLive in its effort to challenge the attempted sealing of the document. Once the record was made public, the newspaper was able to report that the officer who brought the lawsuit received $150,000 to settle the legal dispute, a sum paid by the city’s insurer.
The court’s ruling is the latest of several cases in which local journalists and newsrooms in Pennsylvania have successfully fought to access settlement agreements with free legal support from Paula Knudsen Burke, the Reporters Committee’s Local Legal Initiative attorney in the state.
Read more from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
