'Moot' Dianne Barrett Suit Against D86 Dismissed by Judge

Dianne Barrett’s lawsuit against District 86 officials has been dismissed again.

In a court order signed June 26, DuPage Circuit Court Judge Paul M. Fullerton granted a motion to dismiss filed by the defendants, Superintendent Nick Wahl and former Board President Dennis Brennan. The ruling, Fullerton wrote, was based on the facts that the case had become very specific to the parties involved and that Barrett and Brennan were no longer board members.

“The plaintiff’s status as a non-Board member (as well as the fact that Brennan’s is no longer a Board member) makes this matter moot,” Fullerton’s court order reads.

Despite Fullerton declaring the case "concluded," attorney Clint Krislov, lead counsel for Barrett from the Center for Open Government, said there will likely be an appeal of the judge's dismissal.  

"It’s her case, so this will be her decision," Krislov said, referring to Barrett, "but I don’t doubt that we will be authorized to pursue the appeal."

Barrett did not immediately respond to a phone call or email.

Regarding the case being moot, Krislov said he believes a "public interest exception" should be made for Barrett. Such an exception was dismissed by Fullerton in his court order.

"Ms. Barrett filed early in her time and the board managed to frustrate her intentions and run out of the clock on her term. That’s the thing that the courts need to address," Krislov said.    

Fullerton wrote in his dismissal that there is "no question of public importance generated by the facts of this case," which had become "very fact specific to the litigants in the case."

In November 2011, Judge Thomas Dudgeon dismissed an earlier iteration of Barrett’s lawsuit against Wahl and Brennan over board members' right to "unfettered access" to all district records. Before that ruling, Barrett’s lawyers from the Center for Open Government argued that all board members should be able to access all district records without any information redacted, including information about particular students.

Barrett filed the lawsuit after she unsuccessfully sought non-redacted copies of District 86 special education records.

Despite Dudgeon’s dismissal, the Barrett case resumed in May 2012. Barrett's team filed an amended complaint seeking closed-session audiotapes Barrett had been denied after missing a board meeting and challenged a District 86 board policy approved in March 2012 that changed the rules regarding board members’ access to district documents not made available to the public.

Under that policy, which was approved by a 5-1 vote at a meeting Barrett missed, board members must demonstrate why they need such records.

Fullerton, who took over the case last year due to Dudgeon's increasing workload, wrote that he had previously dismissed the challenge to the board policy and a motion by Barrett’s team to reconsider that dismissal is “stricken and denied.”

“It is stricken because it has not been brought properly before this court as a motion to reconsider. It is denied because it does not bring to the court’s attention newly discovered evidence, changes in the law or errors of the courts application of these facts to existing law,” Fullerton writes.

Krislov said an appeal will likely need to be filed within 30 days of the ruling, meaning that deadline would come in late July.

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