DOJ seeks injunction against journalist over records released in error

Court hearing is Monday in Winnebago County

The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh is seeking to bar a journalist from publishing information obtained from documents it says were sent to him by mistake, a move his attorney is deriding as an “unprecedented intrusion on news reporting.”

A court hearing in the case is scheduled for Monday before Circuit Judge Daniel Bissett in Winnebago County.

Attorney General Brad Schimel has filed a motion to reopen an open records case involving journalist Alex Nemec and UW-Oshkosh business school professor Willis W. Hagen III, who reportedly was relieved of his classes in 2017.

Schimel and attorneys for Hagen are seeking a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction against Nemec, who now works for the Oconomowoc Enterprise.

Nemec and Hagen could not be reached Saturday.

The case dates to early 2017 when Nemec, then a reporter for UW-Oshkosh’s student newspaper, The Advance-Titan, filed an open records request with the university seeking Hagen’s disciplinary records and emails.

Hagen sued the university and the Board of Regents for the University of Wisconsin System to block their release.

The judge ordered the records released but with some material redacted. And that decision was upheld on appeal.

When the records custodian finally released the documents in August, she inadvertently sent the unredacted copies to Nemec, according to Schimel’s notice to the court.

Schimel is asking that the court force Nemec to destroy the records and bar him from sharing or publishing any information that had been mistakenly released. In a separate filing, Hagen is asking the court to require Nemec to “identify all persons and entities to whom he disclosed the confidential information.”

“If Nemec is not directed to destroy the unredacted records and to agree not to publicize their contents, irreparable harm will result, not only for Hagen, but for others whose names are mentioned,” Schimel wrote.

Nemec’s attorney, Christa Westerberg, said Nemec already deleted the documents. And she called the attempts to bar his use or sharing of the information “unconstitutional as prior restraint on speech” and “an unprecedented intrusion on news reporting and private lives.”

“There is no question that Nemec legally obtained the information,” and the decision about how to use that information is a matter of “editorial control and judgment,” she said.

“It has yet to be demonstrated how governmental regulation of this crucial process can be exercised consistent with the First Amendment guarantees of a free press,” she said.

Nemec’s article about Hagen said the professor taught more than 30 years at UW-Oshkosh and was an attorney.