Media wants Court of Appeals to overturn Lawson ruling

FRANKFORT — Three Kentucky media companies want the state Court of Appeals to grant its request to release statements made by an indicted road contractor in connection with a 1983 court case.

Bill Nighbert (left) and Leonard Lawson

In a motion filed Tuesday, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Associated Press want the Court of Appeals to overturn a Franklin Circuit Court judge’s July 29 temporary injunction barring the release of the 1983 statement by road contractor Leonard Lawson.

Lawson and two others are scheduled to go to trial Jan. 11 on charges that they conspired to pay for internal Transportation Cabinet estimates on road projects that Lawson’s companies were set to bid on in 2006 and 2007.

In 1983, Mountain Enterprises, which Lawson owned at the time, pleaded guilty to violating anti-trust laws. Lawson gave a statement to investigators with the Kentucky Attorney General’s office at the time.

The Courier-Journal, the Herald-Leader and the Associated Press had asked for Lawson’s statement through the Kentucky Open Records Act. Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway’s office ruled that the records could be released, but notified attorneys representing Lawson in the current criminal case about the release of the records.

Attorneys for Lawson filed a lawsuit in Franklin Circuit Court asking that the information not be released. Among other arguments, lawyers for Lawson said the publication of the statement could harm Lawson’s chances of getting an impartial jury.

Franklin Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate sided with Lawson and issued a temporary injunction on July 29. In its motion filed Tuesday, the media argues that Lawson could not show that there would be “irreparable injury” if the documents were disclosed to the public. Lawson “would not suffer any legally cognizable injury at all,” the motion says.

In his ruling, Wingate said that the documents had not been released in 26 years. A slight delay would not hurt harm the public or the public’s right to know, Wingate said. But lawyers for the media argue that the temporary injunction does threaten the public’s right to know the contents of public records.

“The fact that the OAG did not disclose the records in the past 26 years is nothing more than a consequence of the fact that no one asked for them,” the media argues in court documents.

– Beth Musgrave