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Clinic Alum Argues to Unseal Settlement Records in Pennsylvania Wrongful Death Suit

Cornell First Amendment Clinic alum Connor Flannery ’23 argued in the Court of Common Pleas, Dauphin County, on February 26, 2023, seeking access to sealed settlement agreements on behalf of local journalism client The Patriot News/PennLive. The Clinic’s client seeks access to the settlement agreements in a wrongful death suit to shed further light on an issue of great public concern involving a young mother killed by an oncoming train as she was exiting a boat ramp in Halifax, Pennsylvania. Also pictured are Mr. Flannery’s supervising attorneys Heather Murray, Managing Attorney of the Cornell Local Journalism Project, Paula Knudsen Burke, Local Legal Initiative Attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Diane Siegel Danoff, a partner at Dechert LLP.

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Clinic Represents New York Newspaper in First Amendment Retaliation Suit

The Clinic filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York in December 2023 against Delaware County on behalf of Catskills-based newspaper The Reporter. The suit claims that county officials violated the paper’s constitutional rights in de-designating it as an official paper and in issuing what has amounted to an illegal gag order for county employees. Read The Times Union coverage of the suit here and Cornell Law School’s coverage of the suit here.

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Clinic Secures Access to Dangerous Driving Records for News Outlet Streetsblog

After filing suit months ago against the NYC DOT on behalf of news outlet Streetsblog to seek access to basic information that is key to assessing the City’s pilot program aimed at curbing dangerous driving, the DOT produced documents to our client on Thanksgiving eve. Thanks to Clinic alumna Yifei Yang for her excellent work on this matter in preparing the Petition and accompanying brief.

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Clinic Client Launches Wage Theft Monitor

New York news outlet Documented launched its Wage Theft Monitor, the largest public repository of data on New York businesses found guilty of wage theft, in August 2023. The Clinic worked hand-in-hand with Documented over the past four years to secure data from the New York Department of Labor via a lawsuit and subsequent negotiations surrounding multiple public records requests.

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Cornell Clinic and RCFP Win Access to Wrongful Death Suit Settlement Records on Behalf of York Daily Record

Pennsylvania news outlet the York Daily Record successfully obtained the unsealing of records in August demonstrating that York County and prison healthcare contractor PrimeCare Medical, Inc. defendants settled a wrongful death suit brought by the estate of Veronique Henry for $200,000. York County previously disclosed that its portion of the settlement was $5,000 and had refused to release full settlement details. The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a motion to intervene and unseal the federal court records on behalf of the York Daily Record in July.

Henry’s estate brought the wrongful death suit against York County and PrimeCare defendants after Henry committed suicide in her cell shortly after her 2016 arrest in connection with a double homicide. Her estate alleged in the suit that corrections officers and healthcare workers knew that Henry was particularly vulnerable to suicide but failed to take action.

Because PrimeCare is one of the largest jail medical providers in the state, with a track record of paying “millions to settle lawsuits levied against them in federal courts in recent years,” the York Daily Record reached out to the Reporters Committee and the Cornell Clinic to file suit to obtain access to records of significant public concern.  

“Since York County’s contract with PrimeCare was just recently approved for another three years, it is critical for us to continue to report on allegations of improper medical care at York County Prison. Access to settlement records is essential to hold government and its contractors accountable,” said Randy Parker, Editor of the York Daily Record and Central Pennsylvania Executive Editor of the USA Today Network. 

Clinic student Ashley Stamegna, who took the lead in drafting the motion to intervene and unseal the settlement records with supervision from attorneys at the Clinic and the Reporters Committee, said, “We are thrilled by the complete victory for our client. The vast majority of civil cases are now resolved via settlement rather than at a trial open to the public. To allow for public scrutiny of the judicial process, settlement information should as a matter of course be equally available to the public.”

Paula Knudsen Burke of the Reporters Committee and Heather Murray, Managing Attorney of the Clinic’s Local Journalism Project, worked with Stamegna on the suit.

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Clinic Client Publishes Op-Ed on Need for Transparency in Uvalde Shooting Investigation

Freelancer Michelle Garcia published a powerful op-ed in The Daily Beast on Wednesday, June 1, 2022, regarding the need for transparency in the investigation into the Uvalde school shooting. The op-ed highlights the public records access work that the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic and the SMU Dedman School of Law First Amendment Clinic have been doing on her behalf to access arrest and immigration referral records related to the Texas Governor’s Operation Lone Star border initiative.

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Clinic Files Lawsuit to Obtain Buffalo Bills Stadium Study

On behalf of Buffalo-based nonprofit investigative journalism center Investigative Post, the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic filed an Article 78 petition against Erie County in March 2022 seeking the disclosure of documents regarding the current home of the Buffalo Bills, Highmark Stadium. Investigative Post published an article about the lawsuit here, and an update here.

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Clinic Student argues in the 4th Department

Ashley Stamegna, a student at the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic, argued an appeal before a panel of New York’s Appellate Division, Fourth Department on Ashley made the compelling, important case that our client, The Batavian, should have been granted access to an attorney disqualification motion in a family court matter and now should be provided a transcript of that proceeding. Ashley has been a forceful advocate for local journalism in her three semesters with our clinic. Congratulations also go to our clinic alumnus, Christopher Johnson, and current student Tim Birchfield, both of whom worked with Ashley on the brief which a Judge on the panel said in open court was “exceedingly well written”. Final congrats to Heather Murray, the Managing Attorney of our clinic’s Local Journalism Project, for supervising this important matter.

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First Amendment Clinic Scores Amicus Victory in Request to Unseal EB-5 Records

Days after filing an amicus brief in federal court on behalf of the Vermont Journalism Trust concerning the largest financial fraud in Vermont’s history, Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic, Cornell Dolan, and the ACLU of Vermont won access to documents that had previously been sealed by the court. These documents may shine a light on the critical question of when the State of Vermont became aware of the fraud and what actions the state took in the months before the fraud became public.

The amicus brief supported a motion to unseal filed by former Jay Peak Resort President Bill Stenger after he reached a plea agreement with the federal government concerning his alleged role in an EB-5 visa investment scheme. After that fraudulent scheme was discovered, a federal agency shut down the Vermont EB-5 Regional Center that oversaw EB-5 projects, immigrant investors lost their funds and a clear path to U.S. citizenship, and Vermont residents lost out on promised job opportunities.

The State of Vermont initially opposed making the documents public, claiming that “privileges apply to them,” but, shortly after the Vermont Journalism Trust filed its amicus brief, the state agreed that the documents should be unsealed. The court ordered the unsealing of the documents on September 23, 2021. The Vermont Journalism Trust argued in its brief that these documents were of significant public interest and must be unsealed because the First Amendment and common law rights of access applied to them.Heather Murray

Heather Murray

“We recognize the tremendous importance of the release of these documents to the public,” says Heather Murray, managing attorney of the Local Journalism Project at the Cornell First Amendment Clinic. “Our clinic is thrilled that we could assist VTDigger in its excellent investigative reporting on this major financial fraud.”

Associate Clinic Director Jared Carter and law students Alyssa Ertel, Andrew Gelfand, Lauren Kazen, and Victoria Martin provided critical assistance in preparing the brief.

Since 2012, the Vermont Journalism Trust, operating as VTDigger, has been reporting on the state’s lax oversight of the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program, a federal program designed to create jobs and stimulate foreign capital investment in low-income regions.

“The EB-5 scandal shows the need for more transparency and government accountability, and that is exactly why we’ve been fighting for access to these and other EB-5 documents for the past several years,” says Lia Ernst, legal director of the ACLU of Vermont.

The EB-5 program allows foreign entrepreneurs who make specified financial investments in the United States to apply for lawful permanent resident status. In April 2016, the state and the federal Securities Exchange Commission filed civil suits against several individuals and corporate entities alleged to have misused, in a “Ponzi-like” scheme, more than $200 million of these investor funds marked for projects in Vermont.

“This is the fourth case we’ve been involved in seeking access to EB-5 records that shed light on the government’s oversight of these projects and its actions once it became aware of the fraud,” says Timothy Cornell of Cornell Dolan. “Today marks a significant victory in the pursuit of truth for both our client and the public, but these actions should not be necessary for the public to learn what their government did.”

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Cornell’s First Amendment and Entrepreneurship Clinics Launch Innovative Partnership

The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic is excited to announce that it has initiated a pilot program with Cornell Law School’s Entrepreneurship Clinic – a very popular clinic at Cornell which provides corporate services to emerging enterprises.

For this pilot, the First Amendment Clinic has brought to the Cornell Entrepreneurship Clinic two of its representative media clients in need of more “foundational” legal services ─ one based in New York City and the other in Phoenix, Arizona, each with different legal challenges.  The concept is that these two clients will be represented by a team of students from both clinics, supervised by the Director of the Entrepreneurship Clinic (Celia Bigoness) and the Managing Attorney of the First Amendment Clinic’s Local Journalism Project (Heather Murray) and the First Amendment Clinic’s NYC-based Local Journalism Attorney (Ava Lubell).    

The purpose of this program is to meet our clients precisely where their needs are and to provide to them a more fulsome representation, more in line with the type of work an in-house lawyer would perform for a media outlet.  The program is also intended to provide our students with a more holistic perspective of a media lawyer who is asked to perform all manner of legal services for their clients. 

According to Clinic Director Mark Jackson: “our view is that in order to be an effective media attorney, a lawyer needs to be acquainted and adept at both litigation and corporate skills.” Jackson added “a good litigator understands their clients’ commercial needs and that a good corporate attorney understands the newsgathering challenges of their clients.”