Sloan case heads to Supreme Court

By Cindy Landrum  

MARCH 29, 2011 12:15 p.m. (0)

Ned Sloan’s dispute with the Friends of the Hunley over financial records is headed to the South Carolina Supreme Court – again.

This time, the court will decide whether Circuit Court Judge Joseph Strickland’s order that the Friends of the Hunley pay Sloan attorney fees totaling $138,529.51 in the case that is now 10 years old.

In 2001, Sloan, who is known for suing state and local governments under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, requested financial and other documents from Friends of the Hunley.

The H.L. Hunley sank Feb. 17, 1864 after ramming a black powder charge into the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston. It was the first submarine to sink a ship.

The submarine was raised in the summer of 2000 and is now in a conservation lab at the old Charleston Navy Base.

The Friends of the Hunley is a caretaker group in charge of conserving the rebel submarine.

The group first claimed it was a charitable organization and was not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Sloan sued, claiming since Friends of the Hunley had received more than $13 million in public funds, it was a public body under the statute.

Friends of the Hunley later produced some of the requested documents, saying they were not turned over as a concession the group was covered under FOIA but in a “spirit of cooperation.”
Sloan continued his lawsuit, saying he wanted the court to declare Friends were subject to and had violated FOIA. Lower courts called the lawsuit moot because the documents Sloan sought were released.

While the case was pending in the state Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court decided to review the case because it involved an issue of “significant public interest or a legal principle of major importance.”

Before oral arguments in the case, attorneys for Friends of the Hunley wrote the group would no longer contest that FOIA applied to it.

The following week, when pressed by the Supreme Court during oral argument, the defendants conceded Friends was a public body and subject to FOIA. The Supreme Court threw the lawsuit out because there was no longer a legal controversy to decide.

Strickland ruled Sloan prevailed in the case because the action was necessary to compel the disclosure, and the action had a substantial causative effect on the delivery of the information to the plaintiff.

The Friends of the Hunley, “after extensive litigation, at the 11^th hour, and facing imminent defeat, (attempted to) simply moot (the) case in order to dodge this fee-shifting statute,” Strickland wrote in his opinion.

“Plaintiff was required to expend considerably more time and effort on the case because the defendants transformed a simple FOIA request and the applicability of FOIA into complex and drawn out litigation,” Strickland’s order said.

Strickland’s order said Sloan paid the legal fees out of his own pocket as accrued.

The judge ordered Sloan be paid $138,529.51.

The court had been before the Court of Appeals, but the Supreme Court decided to take the case because of the public interest.

Oral arguments are scheduled for April 6.

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