The great photocopier fight

Back in 2011, Cuyahoga County, Ohio was sued over the how its Recorder’s office dispensed public documents. Many public agencies don’t like having to make copies of public records because, especially in the days when everything was on paper, it was a time-consuming task that took away the staff away from the office’s regular business.

But county recorders exist to manage and disburse records — an archive of birth and death certificates, deeds, records of surveys, maps, and so on. But this dispute arose over the other part of their job that sometimes gets controversial: the fees charged for those copies that they dispense to members of the public.

Ohio law provides that someone seeking a copy of a public record maintained by a county recorder had to pay $2.00 per page “or photocopying a document.” But even in 2011, most people didn’t want paper copies — they wanted electronic copies. But Cuyahoga county kept charging $2 per page even when someone was, in effect, simply duplicating a computer file.

The lawsuit started when some title companies noted that they were getting enormous copying bills from Cuyahoga County, even though it takes just as much effort (and no paper or toner) to copy the County’s entire log of documents as to copy a single page; heck, nowadays a lot of this stuff is posted online. But the County was charging fees as if it were still the 1960s.

What made the dispute memorable, however, was not the County’s copying practices, but what happened during a deposition of a Recorder’s Office employee named Lawrence Patterson. Things were moving along as is typical in a deposition (i.e., soporifically) when a ten-page exchange between Patterson, his attorney, and the attorney for the title companies turned into the stuff of legend. It started out like this:

Plaintiffs’ Lawyer: During your tenure in the computer department at the Recorder’s office, has the Recorder’s office had photocopying machines? County’s Attorney: Objection. Q: Any photocopying machine?

Patterson: When you say “photocopying machine,” what do you mean?

Q: Let me . . . make sure I understand your question. You don’t have an understanding of what a photocopying machine is?

Patterson: No. I want to make sure that I answer your question correctly . . . When you say “photocopying machine,” what do you mean?

Q: Let me be clear. The term “photocopying machine” is so ambiguous that you can’t picture in your mind what a photocopying machine is in an office setting?

Patterson: I just want to make sure I answer your question correctly.

Q: Well, we’ll find out. If you can say yes or no, I can do follow-ups, but it seems — if you really don’t know in an office setting what a photocopying machine is, I’d like the Ohio Supreme Court to hear you say so.

And so it went among the three combatants, for the 10 pages of the deposition, with Patterson repeatedly asking questions along the lines of “what do you mean” as the title companies’ lawyer in turn got increasingly frustrated that somebody who worked in an office that exists to make copies of documents claimed not to understand what a “photocopier” was. At one point, the County’s attorney even got into a defensive disquisition about how photocopies can be “photostatic,” “xerographic,” or use “scanning technology.”

Eventually, though, the title companies’ lawyer found a way around the obstruction (or perhaps just having an exceeding nervous witness) and asked Patterson what he would call a machine used to make a copy of one kind of paper document from another. And Patterson answered, a “Xerox” machine.

The exchange made nationwide headlines back in 2011. But the real treat is that in 2014, as part of its “Verbatim” Op-Docs series, no less an institution than the New York Times hired several actors to play the part of Patterson, the two lawyers, and the court reporter (who doesn’t actually say anything — she could even be a real court reporter). The actors, especially the one playing the title companies’ lawyer, well . . . let’s just say, chewed the scenery a bit more than the cold transcript itself seems to suggest happened, but unlike a lot of depositions these days, the original sadly wasn’t videorecorded.

According to the Times, the case was eventually settled out of court. And presumably the next time someone takes Mr. Patterson’s deposition about his job in the Recorder’s Office, the lawyer can start the questioning with “Does the Recorder’s office have Xerox machines?” and save everyone a lot of time.

The lawsuit started when some title companies noted that they were getting enormous copying bills from Cuyahoga County, even though it takes just as much effort (and no paper or toner) to copy the County’s entire log of documents as to copy a single page