This note to readers from Laura Gunderson, editor of the Oregonian newspaper and OregonLive.com website, highlights a recent win on an important issue–the ability of powerful, wealthy, or well-connected people to turn the public’s court system into a private system of justice by hiding their court cases away from public view.

Hawaii’s court system allows the same kind of abuse. Not only court documents, but entire court dockets, removed from the public record.

The Public First Law Center, formerly known as the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest, has challenged these practices in an ongoing set of lawsuits.

The editor’s note flags something important, a provision of the Oregon State Constitution requiring that “no court shall be secret, but justice shall be administered, openly and without purchase.”

And, yes, we have longstanding ties to Oregon which led me to pay for a digital subscription to the Oregonian/OregonLive. It’s a newspaper that I highly recommend.

In any case, from the editor….

Dear reader,

Regular readers of this column know that while it’s a journalist’s job to report and publish the news, much of their time also is spent pushing for access to public records and meetings and, sometimes, courthouses and case files.

Often, those latter tasks drag on and on.

But here’s a whoop and a holler for one that went quickly – for the justice system, that is.

You may recall that my predecessor, Therese Bottomly, wrote in June about how Portland Trail Blazer Damian Lillard and his ex-wife, Kay’La Hanson, had filed for divorce in 2023. While divorce filings are supposed to be public, a Clackamas County judge had agreed to seal the case, which blocks it entirely from public view. The judge, one of several in Clackamas County who have handled parts of the case, even agreed to put the order that sealed the case under wraps as well.

After Bottomly began asking questions, the hundred or so records that had already been filed in the case disappeared from the online database that reporters and others use to track court proceedings.

It was highly unusual – and appeared to be a concession made only to those who have the resources to hire a high-powered attorney who knows how to argue for evading open courts requirements. Over the past five years, only a handful of other divorce cases in the state were similarly made secret.

It also flew in the face of the Oregon Constitution, which requires “no court shall be secret, but justice shall be administered, openly and without purchase.”

Bottomly’s column piqued the interest of Jim Hargreaves, a retired Lane County judge who shared her concerns about the creation of secret court systems for the wealthy.

As The Oregonian/OregonLive reporter Zane Sparling shared last Monday, Hargreaves challenged the move to seal the records.

It’s not that he cares so much about seeing the details of the high-profile dissolution, he told Clackamas County’s Presiding Judge Michael Wetzel. (Wetzel was not the judge who issued the original order to seal the case).

“I want my right under statute to look at the case file,” he said. “We don’t do secret litigation in this country.”

That’s why it matters to journalists, too.

When we take on these fights for access to records and meetings, we do so in the name of the public. Average citizens rarely have the time or resources for these challenges that often require some expertise, diligence and a lot of patience.

It was interesting to read Lillard’s attorney’s response to Hargreaves’ filing.

“Mr. Hargreaves has no stake in this divorce proceeding,” wrote Joseph M. Levy, an attorney with Markowitz Herbold. “He is not related to any of the parties, nor even friends with any of the parties. In fact, to the best of their knowledge, he has never met the parties or their children.

“His reasons for prying into the parties’ sensitive divorce are a complete mystery.”

No, not a mystery. Put simply, this is about Oregonians’ right to a fair and open judicial system.

And Wetzel agreed.

The judge overturned the blanket ban that sealed the case. He acknowledged the sensitivity around court documents that may reference the former couple’s three children and gave lawyers 60 days to identify wording around them or financial matters that they’d like redacted.

This isn’t an arbitrary argument allowing people to pry into others’ personal matters. It’s that we can’t abide a system in which people who can afford can find ways to shield themselves from scrutiny.

Such allowances create an opening for others with the means, which not only can lead to secrecy for cases of broad public impact but also erode the justice system’s credibility and the public’s trust.

Thanks for reading!

Laura Gunderson
Editor and Vice President of Content
The Oregonian/OregonLive
lgunderson@oregonian.com