In re Appointment of Special Deputy Prosecuting Attorney (Majority)
Annotate this CaseFranklin County Washington was an early adopter of an electronic filing system for superior court cases. The county clerk and the superior court judges largely cooperated with the transition to "Odyssey" and anticipated that court files would be paperless by 2018. To facilitate this transition, the clerk gave the superior court judges wireless access devices and expressed his willingness to accommodate other requests. Shortly after the clerk's transition to a paperless file system was fully implemented, the superior court judges of Franklin County directed the Franklin County clerk to continue making and maintaining paper files. The clerk declined to do so as his budget was insufficient to allow him to maintain duplicate paper files. The clerk also deemed it unnecessary to maintain duplicate paper files once Odyssey had been implemented. Declaring an emergency, the judges adopted a local rule requiting the clerk to maintain paper files for all file types. When the Franklin County Clerk continued to resist creating duplicate paper files, the judges threatened legal action. The Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney appointed a special deputy prosecuting attorney pursuant to RCW 36.27.040 to represent the clerk with respect to any contempt or other legal action the judges threatened to pursue. The issue presented to the Washington Supreme Court was whether the judges validly issued an order of appointment under RCW 36.27.030, securing their own special deputy prosecuting attorney to pursue their legal action against the clerk. The Supreme Court determined the judges' appointment order was invalid: "while the judges are free to sue the clerk, they must do it at their own expense."
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