On June 12, Courthouse News Service has filed a federal suit alleging Harris County district clerk Loren Jackson and chief deputy clerk Wes McCoy are violating its constitutional rights by making it difficult for its Houston-based reporter to get immediate access to civil court filings. CNS, a legal newswire service headquartered in Pasadena, Calif., alleges its reporters have reviewed civil court filings at the Harris County Civil Courthouse since May 1999, but new procedures that the clerk’s office instituted in October 2008 significantly reduced CNS’s Houston reporter’s ability to look at newly filed petitions on a timely basis. CNS alleges more procedural changes in March 2009 further limit the reporter’s timely access to petitions by requiring him to look at most newly filed petitions after they are posted on the “eDocs” section of the office’s Web site, which can be delayed by several days. CNS alleges that since March 30, its Houston reporter has only been able to see an average of five or six petitions on the same day they are filed, which is roughly 5 percent to 10 percent of all petitions filed. “By publishing docket information on new petitions and the petitions themselves before Courthouse News is even allowed to see them, Defendants are effectively “scooping” Courthouse News and any other competing news service,” CNS alleges in Courthouse News Service v. Loren Jackson, et al., filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. CNS seeks temporary and permanent court orders to prevent the defendants from denying it access to new civil petitions and other case-initiating documents on the same day they are filed, and seeks a declaratory judgment under 28 U.S.C. §2201 that denial of same-day access to those documents, except when the filing party is seeking immediate relief, is unconstitutional under the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and violates Texas common law and Rule 76a of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. Calls to Jackson and McCoy were referred to Ed Mahar, the federal trial division chief for the Harris County Attorney’s Office, who could not be reached for immediate comment. John K. Edwards, a Houston partner in Jackson Walker who represents Courthouse News, says the suit was assigned to U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon. He hopes to schedule a hearing on the motion for preliminary injunction within the next 10 days.
-- Brenda Sapino Jeffreys
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