Date
December 13, 2006
Contact
Matt Rossell
(503) 890-5151
In Defense of Animals
3010 Kerner Blvd
San Rafael
CA 94901
IDA is an international, California-based animal advocacy organization dedicated to ending the abuse and exploitation of animals by defending their rights, welfare and habitats.
IDA Receives Mountain of OHSU Monkey Records That Could Have Been Delivered on Disk
Portland, Ore.—Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) just delivered approximately 113,000 pages of monkey records to In Defense of Animals (IDA), ending an eight-year dispute over an Oregon Public Records Request for health and behavior histories of monkeys at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. But OHSU chose paper over plastic—dozens of boxes of documents instead of a small pile of CD disks—at a much greater cost to taxpayers and OHSU’s donors.
IDA staff will be available for an interview and photo opportunity with the boxes of documents:
When: Wednesday, December 13th
Where: IDA office, 5428 NE 30th, Portland, OR 97211
“We are anxious to finally be able to review the records that prove that monkeys are suffering in OHSU labs,” said Matt Rossell, IDA’s Northwest Outreach Coordinator and former OHSU Primate Technician. “But we can’t understand why OHSU chose to make taxpayers pick up the tab for paper copies, rather than saving $20,000 and putting them on disks or a hard drive.”
According to cost estimates from OHSU’s own computer applications manager during depositions, it would have only cost OHSU around $2,000 to produce the documents in an electronic format. This is a fraction of the amount OHSU estimated for producing the paper copies—approximately $22,500—which means more than $20,000 in extra costs were incurred by OHSU supporters and taxpayers. (Copies of a letter to OHSU detailing and documenting these facts are available upon request.)
IDA filed suit in July 2001 and prevailed before the Oregon Court of Appeals in April of 2005. In the summary judgment, the court stated the “Defendant [OHSU] has attempted to exact a price so exorbitantly high—over $150,000.00—that it has effectively precluded public access to the requested information.” The case was then remanded to Multnomah County Circuit Court for determination of what, if any, amount of fees would be appropriate to charge IDA. The settlement agreement was recently reached with OHSU giving IDA exactly what they asked for in 1998—public disclosure of the information with a complete waiver of fees due to the public benefit from the information’s release.