Blunt sued by former staff attorney who was fired

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Gov. Matt Blunt was sued Wednesday by a former staff attorney who claims he was fired and defamed in retaliation for pointing out that Blunt's administration was destroying e-mails in violation of Missouri's open-records law.

The lawsuit by former Blunt attorney Scott Eckersley alleges that Blunt's top aides ordered staff to delete e-mails to avoid having to provide information to the media and public under Missouri's Sunshine Law.

Eckersley's lawsuit also claims Blunt's staff sought to cover up their e-mail deletions by trying to order backup computer files to be destroyed. Then after Eckersley was fired, the lawsuit claims, Blunt's staff provided the media with documents intended to smear his reputation.

"This suit is about clearing my name," Eckersley said. "I think clearing my name has two parts: my personal name and my professional name. And I think both of them they tried to attack."

Blunt declined to comment about the lawsuit Thursday morning at the governor's annual prayer breakfast but pledged to discuss it later in the day.

Blunt's office issued a written statement Wednesday claiming it saves and makes public more e-mails than any other state official.

"This is political and, on an initial reading, it is totally without merit," said the statement by Blunt's general counsel, Lowell Pearson. "His dismissal had nothing to do with e-mail and was lawful."

Eckersley was fired in late September and went public with his allegations about a month later -- at the same as Blunt's administration provided an unsolicited stack of documents to The Associated Press and other media defending Eckersley's firing and casting in him in a bad light.

Blunt's administration claimed at the time that Eckersley was fired for doing a shoddy job, tardiness, lying and using his state computer for do work for his father's private health care business. The media packet also claimed Eckersley had registered for what Blunt's administration described as a "group sex Internet site" and noted that Blunt's chief of staff had questioned whether Eckersley used illegal drugs.

Eckersley's lawsuit asserts that the information about group sex and drug use "was patently false" and intentionally "designed to injure, defame and smear" Eckersley. He said Blunt's staff had granted him permission to do the private work, which he described as minimal.

The lawsuit filed in Jackson County Circuit Court names Blunt; his former Chief of Staff Ed Martin; former General Counsel Henry Herschel; Blunt communications director Rich Chrismer; and Rich AuBuchon, the deputy director and chief legal counsel for Blunt's Office of Administration.

It seeks unspecified monetary damages on four counts: defamation, wrongful firing and violations of Missouri's whistleblower protection and open-records laws.

The lawsuit says that Herschel called a meeting of all department general counsels in August 2007 after the media reported "a negative story" about e-mails that Chrismer sent to the Missouri State Highway Patrol seeking to reshape its public characterization of an investigation into the 2005 Taum Sauk Reservoir collapse.

Herschel told attorneys that to avoid negative press, e-mails should be deleted to avoid having to turn them over in compliance with Sunshine Law requests, the lawsuit alleges. Around the same time, Martin also instructed governor's office staff to delete e-mails to ensure they did not have to be provided under public records requests, the lawsuit says.

Public attention began to focus on the e-mail deletions in Blunt's office after the Springfield News-Leader reported in September that Blunt's office had denied an open-records request for e-mails sent by Martin. Martin told the newspaper that he didn't save the e-mails.

Eckersley, who had been assigned to handle the paper's records request, then tried to explain to Blunt's staff how e-mails should be kept under the Sunshine Law and the state's record retention policies, the lawsuit says. As a result, the lawsuit says, Blunt's top aides ordered Eckersley not to handle any more Sunshine Law requests.

Even when e-mails are deleted from a computer, they are saved for several months on backup tapes kept by the state data center within the Office of Administration. The lawsuit claims Blunt's administration "ordered that these backup e-mail computer tapes be destroyed."

AuBuchon denied in a previous interview with The Associated Press that he ever ordered the backup files to be destroyed. The state's computer chief, Dan Ross, also told the AP previously that he never ordered the backup files destroyed.

After intense media publicity about Eckersley's firing and e-mail deletions, Blunt in November directed his administration to come up with a way of permanently retaining e-mails.

Attorney General Jay Nixon, who is challenging Blunt in this year's gubernatorial election, also appointed a three-person team in November to investigate whether Blunt's office was violating the Sunshine Law or document retention policies.

One of Nixon's investigators, St. Louis attorney Chet Pleban, said Thursday that the lawsuit would not deter that investigation.

"We're requesting a variety of documents, and were hoping for more cooperation from the governor than there has been," Pleban said.

Blunt replaced Martin as chief of staff on Nov. 20, though he praised him for doing "a great job."

Blunt confirmed Dec. 4 that he had replaced Herschel as general counsel, instead naming him to a new role as an administrative law judge handling workers' compensation cases. Blunt's office denied that Herschel's reassignment had anything to do with the e-mail deletion controversy.

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Associated Press writer Christopher Leonard in St. Louis and Chris Blank in Jefferson City contributed to this report.