Blunt administration files bar complaint against ex-staffer

ST. LOUIS -- The Blunt administration has filed a complaint with the Missouri Bar against former staff lawyer Scott Eckersley that could potentially cost him his law license, Eckersley's attorney, Steve Garner, said Wednesday evening.

"I'm thinking they're trying to penalize this kid, and they're trying to take his license," Garner said.

The complaint is just the latest chapter in a heated battle between Eckersley and Blunt officials. The 30-year-old lawyer was fired Sept. 28 by Blunt chief of staff Ed Martin, and officials have said he was a poor worker with attitude problems who received e-mails at work from an adult Web site.

But Eckersley said he was fired because his legal advice was at odds with the Blunt administration's policy of deleting internal office e-mails. Eckersley sent at least one memo two weeks before he was fired that challenged statements Blunt and his officials were making at the time, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The Associated Press.

Garner said the bar association complaint was filed by Eckersley's former boss, Henry Herschel. Garner he said would not provide a copy of the complaint because it is not a public record.

Blunt spokesman Rich Chrismer did not return a phone message and e-mail seeking comment on the complaint Wednesday night.

Eckersley said he was ready to challenge the complaint.

"First I've been told I didn't say anything, now I'm being told I said too much," he said.

The complaint says Eckersley violated a confidentiality agreement with the governor when he told news outlets he was fired for voicing his legal opinions on the administration's policy of deleting e-mails, Garner said.

Attorneys are prohibited from revealing the advice they give clients during discussions, or the information that clients give them.

While it is not illegal to do so, the bar association can revoke a lawyer's license to practice if he violates the client-attorney privilege.

Garner said the complaint was filed around Oct. 19, but he did not learn about it until recently. That's because Eckersley has been outside of the state for weeks and did not get news of the complaint until he returned last week, Garner said.

In response to the complaint, Garner sent a letter Wednesday to Herschel asking him to preserve all of Eckersley's e-mails sent in the months before he was fired.

"Certainly, the State would not want backup tapes to be erased, destroyed or altered in any way, not only to assure preservation of evidence in the Eckersley case, but to make sure no one runs afoul of the law," the letter said.

Blunt officials have denied repeatedly that Eckersley ever asserted his views on open records policy before he was fired. Garner said the bar complaint ultimately validates his client's central claim that he did express those views several times.

"The only way that they could make that complaint is that what Scott Eckersley says he told them is what he told them," Garner said.

Eckersley's mid-September memo was not clear-cut in its stance that e-mails are public records. But it was at odds with statements that Blunt and Chrismer were making at the time.

The memo said some e-mails are considered public because the Missouri Sunshine Law declares public "any record, whether written or ELECTRONICALLY STORED, retained by or of any public governmental body."

Chrismer released a statement at the time saying: "There is no statute or case that requires the state to retain individual's e-mails as a public record."

Blunt suggested in mid-September that e-mails were not required to be retained for three years, the length of time other public records must be saved.

"Nobody saves e-mails for three years," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Eckersley's memo pointed out that when Blunt was secretary of state in 2001, he "signed a 3-year retention policy for all 'general communication,'" meaning that the communication should be saved for three years.