By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
Open Public Records Act requests from Princeton University regarding communications between the Borough Council and advocates for saving the Dinky train were a matter of discussion at this week’s council meeting.
The university defended its request, saying it was preparing for a possible trial as a result of two pending lawsuits, said Richard Goldman, a lawyer representing the university. The university is being sued in separate lawsuits by the Save the Dinky and another group challenging the zoning for the site. The borough is also being sued in the zoning lawsuit.
The university requested any e-mails and communications between any borough elected officials-past and present-and the Save the Dinky group and named plaintiffs in the pending lawsuits against the move of the Dinky.
The named plaintiffs are Ann Neumann, Peter Marks, Rodney Fisk, Walter Neumann, Christopher Hedges, Zanifa Hosein, Rachael Koehn and Dorothy Koehn.
Virginia Kerr, a member of Save the Dinky and an attorney, thanked Councilman Roger Martindell for bringing to light the OPRA request from Princeton University seeking all e-mails related to Save the Dinky and the relocation of the terminus.
She went onto explain the people named in the request are plaintiffs in a lawsuit that was filed in the chancery division of the courts seeking an interpretation of the 1984 agreement of sale between Princeton University and New Jersey Transit.
”This request is an extraordinary overreach by Princeton University, an institution that should know better,” said Ms. Kerr. “This request by Princeton University under the Open Public Records Act is what I would call a strategic OPRA request against public participation.”
She said the request “a troublesome use of an important statue” was a ploy to target and intimidate people, “and make them worry about their communications to public officials or somehow brand them as people public officials should worry about communicating with.”
Ms. Kerr was a party in bringing the litigation the university is now compelled to defend, said Mr. Goldman, of Drinker, Biddle & Reath.
”It’s very surprising to me that an effort to follow the statutory, defined method to ask for copies of public documents creates the kind of furor I’ve heard described,” he said. “There is no other way to formally ask for documents.”
In the Save the Dinky lawsuit, the university is conducting discovery, or trying to find out what the plaintiffs might have said or been told, before they go to trial over a piece of the suit.
”As lawyers it’s our obligation to find out as much information as we can about what positions, representations, what statements the plaintiffs, who are suing us, have made,” said Mr. Goldman. “When we are at trial and these folks are being cross examined, we have no surprises.”
He could not believe people were questioning the university’s right to request copies of public documents.
Mr. Martindell, also an attorney, said there are three negative aspects to the university’s request that impact the public.
The first is that the request was very broad in its scope, requesting all communications of any kind with several members of the Save the Dinky organization going back to January 2006, calling it a “fishing expedition casting a very wide net.”
The second issue is that Mr. Martindell is not sure he may even have the requested e-mails, since the request goes back so many years.
”This would literally take hundreds of hours of work for you private litigants to duke it out and I think that is an imposition on the Borough of Princeton and its constituents,” said Mr. Martindell.
Thirdly, Mr. Martindell said the search would require him to go through hours of e-mails and there may be some non-borough related matters mixed into the e-mails with the Dinky information.
Mr. Martindell said he would not search his records unless he gets what he deemed “an appropriate legal opinion.”
There are ways of addressing Mr. Martindell’s concerns, but “ultimately transparency in government is what rules and private conversations on public business is not the way to serve the public,” said Mr. Goldman as he left the microphone.
Afterward he said he was very surprised that the parties who were bringing the lawsuit were the very same ones who were complaining about the university’s records request.

