Worthington v. WestNET (Majority and Dissent)
Annotate this CaseWestNET was a multiagency, multijurisdictional drug task force formed by an "Interlocal Drug Task Force Agreement" executed in June 2009 among several Washington State municipalities and the federal Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS). The Agreement at issue here explicitly provided that because WestNET "does and must operate confidentially and without public input," "[t]he parties do not intend to create through, this Agreement, a separate legal entity subject to suit." In 2010, petitioner John Worthington filed a public records request that WestNET disclose records related to a raid of his residence four years earlier, which he alleged was conducted by the WestNET drug task force. WestNET did not respond, and instead, the Kitsap County Sheriffs Office made some initial disclosures. The sheriffs office did not indicate why it responded instead of WestNET. Dissatisfied with the response, Worthington sued for relief under the Public Records Act, serving the complaint on the address shared by the Kitsap County Sheriffs Office and the Kitsap County Prosecutor's Office. However, the complaint named WestNET as the only defendant. Because the trial court granted the defendant's CR 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the issue presented for the Supreme Court's review was a narrower procedural issue: can the parties to an inter local agreement establish, as a matter of law, that their own task forces do not exist for the purpose of the PRA? The Court held that the ICA did not provide the contributing agencies with such an unqualified power. In concluding that the terms of the agreement alone conclusively established WestNET's capacity for suit, the trial court deprived the plaintiff of an opportunity to present evidence in support of his argument that WestNET's actual operational structure subjects it to the PRA's purview. That approach is inconsistent with our general approach to PRA issues and the ICA itself. Accordingly, the Court reversed the Court of Appeals and remanded the case for further factual determination proceedings.
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