In O’Neill v. The City of Shoreline, 187 P.3d 822 (Wash.App. Div. 1, July 21, 2008), the court was asked to determine whether the metadata in the electronic version of an email is subject to disclosure under the Washington Public Records Act (“PRA”). Plaintiff filed litigation claiming the defendant, City of Shoreline, and its Deputy Mayor violated PRA in responding to plaintiff’s request for public records.  The records related to a Shoreline City Council meeting where the Deputy Mayor stated that she had received an e-mail that related to a pending zoning matter.  Plaintiff demanded a copy of the email.  When plaintiff received a copy of the email several days later, the header information had been removed.  Plaintiff sought the electronic version of the email along with its associated metadata.

Prior to forwarding the email to another email address, the Deputy Mayor had deleted the header information from the email which resided on her personal computer. She then deleted the email from her personal computer.  The plaintiff argued that the email and its associated metadata were public records.  The City of Shoreline did not dispute this contention, but argued that the electronic version of the email was properly deleted under its then-existing records retention policy.

The Deputy Mayor contended the electronic version of the email and its metadata were not public records.  However, under PRA, any writing containing information relating to the conduct of government or the performance of any governmental or proprietary function prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency is a public record regardless of its physical form or characteristics.  Thus, the email (and electronic version) that the Deputy Mayor referred to and "used" at the public meeting in her official capacity, qualified as a public record.  The court also held that the metadata fell within the broad definition of a writing and that under PRA, the metadata "relates to" the conduct of the government or the performance of a governmental function.

The court ordered the City of Shoreline to determine whether a similar email in their possession contained the requested metadata.  The court also ordered the City of Shoreline to search the Deputy Mayor's home computer to determine if the electronic version of the email could be recovered. If so, the court ordered that it be produced to plaintiff.  If not, the court ordered that it must determine whether the nonproduction of the email constitutes a violation of PRA and, if so, determine the appropriate monetary penalty.  Plaintiff was entitled to recover her costs.