OSO — A King County judge is scheduled Wednesday morning to consider whether sanctions are appropriate after attorneys defending Washington admitted their hired experts have been systematically deleting emails connected to the Oso mudslide case.
The state Attorney General’s Office on Friday filed court papers acknowledging it was wrong for experts to delete records in which they discussed the results of drilling and other efforts being made to determine the 2014 disaster’s cause.
The state’s lawyers insisted the deleting was an honest mistake, however, and not a willful effort to hide evidence in Washington’s largest-ever wrongful death case.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys are not convinced. They want sanctions.
Lawyers for the state repeatedly promised to honor subpoenas and produce the records, knowing they didn’t exist because they’d been deleted across 17 months, they wrote in court papers. They also allege the state and its experts have been tailoring their mudslide investigation to match the planned defense.
“The state’s experts have engaged in manipulating the ‘evidence’ to advance the state’s defense,” attorney Karen Willie of Seattle said in court papers filed Tuesday. “The state’s attorneys could not have been unaware of the manipulation. This type of reprehensible behavior should not be condoned.”
In response to the sanctions motion, the attorney general’s office has hired a computer forensic expert to attempt recovery of the experts’ deleted emails. They’ve also offered to pay attorneys fees and other costs that the plaintiffs may incur connected to withheld or deleted emails.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys have asked Judge Roger Rogoff for sanctions. The harshest would be deciding the case in favor of the plaintiffs without a trial. In the alternative, they’ve suggested the state be precluded from offering testimony from its experts. If that happened, jurors would not be told about the results of roughly $3 million worth of scientific studies, including information from the first-ever investigative drilling on the hill.
Preliminary reports from the state’s experts have regularly been filed with the court. Among other things, they’ve challenged the popular theory that logging over the years made the hillside dangerously prone to collapse. They also contend there was no way to reasonably predict within a human lifetime the timing of a slide like the one that broke loose in 2014, killing 43 people.
Studies since the disaster have found signs of giant slides repeatedly racing across the North Fork Stillaguamish River Valley since the Ice Age.
Scott North: 425-339-3431; north@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snorthnews.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.