Kansas Supreme Court vs. Phill Kline: Kline gets taken to the wood shed

From the Kansas Jackass: "In what the Kansas City Star's legal writer is calling 'one of the most blistering opinions delivered in memory,' the Kansas Supreme Court has ordered former Attorney General Phill Kline to deliver a "full, complete, and understandable set" of the patient records of women who received abortions that he gathered while still Attorney General to current Attorney General Steve Six."

From the Kansas Supreme Court's opinion:

...the patient records at the heart of this case and any and all other inquisition materials gathered or generated by Kline and/or his subordinates during the time he was Attorney General were gathered or generated through expenditure of state taxpayer dollars that flowed into the Attorney General's budget for salaries and expenses. The state's taxpayers, in the person of the current Attorney General, are entitled to a full, complete, and understandable set of those materials....

Kline was demonstrably ignorant, evasive, and incomplete in his sworn written responses submitted to Judge King, this court's appointed agent in the fact-finding process. Kline's responses were far from full and forthright; they showed consistent disregard for Kline's role as a leader in state law enforcement; and they delayed and disrupted this court's inquiry. Among other things, he failed to consult with subordinates as appropriate to give responses, treating questions posed to him as a public servant whose conduct was under scrutiny in a mandamus action as though they were questions posed to him as an uncooperative and too-clever-by-half private litigant. He was thorough only when digressing from the point....

Because Kline's actions also seriously interfered with this court's efforts to determine the facts and arrive at resolution, we also regard reimbursement of this court for the costs of this action in the amount of $50,000–i.e., the minimum personnel expense associated with filings, hearings, and conferences that could have been avoided if Kline's conduct had been otherwise–to be an appropriate additional sanction. However, were we to impose this sanction, it would be borne by Johnson County rather than Kline personally. We are unwilling to make those taxpayers foot any further bill for the conduct of a district attorney they did not elect in the first place and have now shown the door...

To read the complete Kansas Supreme Court's opinion, click here.