{"id":3498,"date":"2015-03-19T17:50:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T22:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/?p=3498"},"modified":"2015-03-23T09:52:57","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T14:52:57","slug":"sunshine-week-you-too-can-take-on-the-government%e2%80%99s-lawyers-%e2%80%93-and-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/2015\/03\/19\/sunshine-week-you-too-can-take-on-the-government%e2%80%99s-lawyers-%e2%80%93-and-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunshine Week: You, too, can take on the government\u2019s lawyers \u2013 and win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everett Chamberlain of Windsor was part of a group of Windsor residents who successfully sued the town in 2007 over its rejection of a Right-to-Know request. Chamberlain, who represented himself in court, helped disclose documents that led to the resignation of the town’s long time tax collector.<\/em> <\/p>\n

Everett Chamberlain is not a lawyer, he\u2019s an electrician.<\/p>\n

He couldn\u2019t afford a lawyer in 2007 when he and a group of residents sued the town of Windsor for refusing a right-to-know request for town tax records. So Chamberlain did what is allowed under state law in these cases: He represented himself in superior court and argued the tax collector\u2019s records were public documents.<\/p>\n

The judge quickly sided with Chamberlain and ordered Windsor to produce the records and pay 10 residents $180.32 to defray the costs of having to bring the court action.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll admit, I was intimidated. No question about it,\u201d Chamberlain said in an interview this week. \u201cBut I knew we had them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The town\u2019s legal counsel told Chamberlain a few days before the hearing that the records were available. <\/p>\n

Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n

Related: Sunshine Week: When the government denies a request for information, you don\u2019t have to take no for an answer<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everett Chamberlain of Windsor was part of a group of Windsor residents who successfully sued the town in 2007 over its rejection of a Right-to-Know request. Chamberlain, who represented himself in court, helped disclose documents that led to the resignation of the town’s long time tax collector. Everett Chamberlain is not a lawyer, he\u2019s an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rtk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3498"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3500,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3498\/revisions\/3500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}