$170K settlement related to county’s legal battle with RJ approved
Clark County is paying an additional $170,000 in a settlement with the Las Vegas Review-Journal related to legal fees incurred over the release of child autopsies.
The settlement, which is to be completed within 45 days, dismisses the case with prejudice, but with no admission of guilt, according to a copy of the agreement.
The payment is the second awarded to the newspaper for the same case, setting the taxpayer cost at $337,000.
That doesn’t include the funds the county used on third-party attorneys to fight a public records lawsuit, which totaled about $80,000 by March 2021. The county did not immediately provide an updated figure.
In 2017, the newspaper was working on an investigation into the county’s child protection division. The county coroner’s office contended that the autopsies were confidential, despite the fact that the documents are not exempted under the Nevada Public Records Act.
The Review-Journal sued the county for the records, and two Nevada Supreme Court orders later, the coroner’s office ultimately released 653 unredacted child autopsies on New Year’s Eve 2020, a day after a court-set deadline.
Nearly four years later, a district judge awarded the Review-Journal $167,000 in legal fees, which was about $40,000 less than the newspaper had sought.
The newspaper continued to incur legal fees as the county resisted full transparency.
Eventually, a settlement was proposed, and the county district attorney’s office recommended approval of the one-time payment.
The item was placed on Tuesday’s consent agenda, meaning there was no public discussion about the settlement.
“The more the Coroner’s office resisted disclosure of the public records at issue, the more work it was for the paper and its counsel,” attorney Maggie McLetchie, who represented the Review-Journal, wrote in an email Tuesday. “I’m pleased we were able to resolve this without it costing the taxpayers even more.”
Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com. Follow @rickytwrites on Twitter.
