Arguments over attorney fees between attorneys for the Howard County Coroner and Glasgow Public Schools took place in Howard County court Monday morning. The matter is the last between the two sides in a case that has been ongoing since 2017. 

In September, the Western District Court of Appeals ruled on nearly all aspects of the case except for the final rewarding of attorneys fees to the school district. Circuit 14 Presiding Judge Scott Hayes was tasked by the appeals court to make the final ruling on the fees.

As was reported in the September 29, 2021 Fayette Advertiser, the appeals court largely sided with the Glasgow School District in its 2017 lawsuit against the office of the Howard County Coroner. The decision upheld Judge Hayes’s July 2020 ruling that then-Howard County Coroner Frank Flaspohler willingly violated the Missouri Sunshine Law when he denied access to records of a public inquest, held in 2017, to the school district. The inquest was held following the suicide death of rural Glasgow teenager Kenneth Suttner. The school district was cited several times during the inquest.   

Judge Hayes’s ruling in 2020 awarded attorneys fees in the amount of $73,250.50 to the school district. But 14 months later, the appeals court ruled that $19,965 of those fees were accrued by the district while its council sought certain exhibits from the inquest. The coroner’s office was not the custodian of those records, and therefore fees resulting from attempts to gain such records could not be charged to the coroner. The appeals court, in its opinion, stated that attorneys fees should only be awarded for the time the district spent seeking the transcript.

In dispute now are attorneys fees totaling around $53,000.

Richard B. Hicks, the attorney representing the coroner’s office, argued that during a hearing on November 1, 2017, Tom Mickes, the attorney representing the Glasgow school district, admitted in court that he had obtained, albeit from another source, the transcript it was seeking from the 2017 coroner’s inquest. Therefore any litigation from that point on took place as the district sought exhibits from the inquest.

“The bulk of this litigation occurred after November 1, 2017,” Mr. Hicks argued on Monday. A big part of this litigation was spent trying to prove that Mr. Flaspohler had violated the Missouri Sunshine Law and trying to acquire the exhibits, not the transcript, he said.

Grant David Wiens, the attorney who appeared on behalf of the Glasgow school district on Monday, and cited Missouri Revised Statue 610.027 which states that if the court finds that there was a purposeful violation of the Sunshine Law, then the court shall order the payment by such body or member of all costs and reasonable attorney fees to any party successfully establishing such a violation. Mr. Flaspohler was found to be in purposeful violation of the Sunshine Law.

Mr. Wiens said that the district is asking for just over $53,000, which he said does not cover all of the fees racked up by the district over the course of the case. He argued that the district had to go through an evidentiary hearing despite the fact that it had acquired the transcript elsewhere. He also said that the district should be awarded around $20,000 spent during the appeals process, which was filed on behalf of the coroner.

“The district would like this to be over with,” Mr. Wiens said Monday. “We would like the public funds back.”

Regardless of how Judge Hayes rules, the taxpayers of Howard County and the Glasgow School District are ultimately responsible for all attorneys fees. As of Monday, the cost to defend the office of the coroner has totaled $62,056.26. The grand total, including attorneys fees awarded to the Glasgow district, could exceed $100,000.

Judge Hayes asked both attorneys to go through the remaining $53,000 at stake and return for a hearing on January 24, 2022 regarding any disputed line items.

Trish Clark, the current Howard County Coroner, said her office considers the matter closed and will not further appeal the case.