Michael Martin Garrett
Continuing a trend of conflict in the county court system, a local law firm is taking aim at Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller’s lawsuit against the county.
Attorneys Sean McGraw and Andrew Shubin, who are co-defendants alongside Centre County, call the DA’s lawsuit an attempt “to restrain public criticism of [Parks Miller’s] conduct in office” in new court documents filed Friday.
McGraw and Shubin’s preliminary objections to Parks Miller’s suit are the latest in a series of attacks both sides have launched against the other in recent months. This conflict could come to a head on May 13, when the two sides gather for a 9:00 a.m. hearing in the Centre County Courthouse Annex.
But before that hearing comes to pass, McGraw and Shubin want the court to dismiss Parks Miller’s lawsuit in its entirety. They claim it raises First Amendment concerns of free speech and fails to make a compelling legal argument about any alleged violation of Parks Miller’s privacy.
Parks Miller first filed her lawsuit last month, alongside two separate suits from two county judges. All three lawsuits make similar allegations.
The DA says that the county illegally released some of her work cell phone records to the Shubin Law Firm in response to Right to Know requests, only to have those records wrongly used against her in court.
Parks Miller also argues that the county had no authority to release her phone records, in part because her cell phone was paid for using drug forfeiture money instead of county funds. She also claims that the release of her records was a violation of her right to privacy.
She wants the Shubin firm to destroy or return any records it received, but McGraw and Shubin say this would be a “prior restraint” of their First Amendment right to free speech. The two attorneys also argue that they shouldn’t be forced to destroy the records because they were lawfully obtained through Right to Know requests.
McGraw and Shubin claim the phone records are public records not subject to personal privacy restrictions. Parks Miller disagrees with the county’s position that the records are public financial documents. Whether or not the phone records are private judicial records has also been a topic of intense debate in lawsuits filed by Judges Jonathan Grine and Kelley-Gillette Walker.
McGraw and Shubin also note that the records only reveal the times that phone calls or text messages were sent and received, and do not speak to the content of any of the calls or texts — which they say makes the alleged violation of privacy a moot point.
This isn’t the first time that McGraw and Shubin have come into conflict with Parks Miller. The Shubin Law Firm has unsuccessfully tried to have Parks Miller disqualified from prosecuting certain criminal cases. At first, the firm used the records of text messages as part of an attempt to have Parks Miller removed from one of McGraw’s cases.
More recently, the two attorneys argued that Parks Miller’s lawsuit against them created a conflict of interest that would prevent her from making unbiased decisions. An out-of-county judge also shot that argument down, saying that his role as a judge was to mediate conflicts and ensure a fair trial.
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