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Life borrows from art: John Grisham quote opens court arguments

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Life borrows from art: John Grisham quote opens court arguments

The case itself has all makings for a page-turner: A convicted felon and imprisoned gang member gains access to the personal information of the officers who helped put him away.

Lawyers for a city just outside of Chicago relied on a John Grisham novel for opening arguments into a privacy rights case for which there is little to no legal precedence, the Chicago Tribune reported on Monday.

Specifically, lawyers for the City of Aurora, Illinois, cited a character from Mr. Grisham’s 2017 bestseller “Camino Island.”

"Elaine was right — nothing is really private these days with the internet and social media and hackers everywhere and all the talk about transparency," begins the city's paperwork requesting that a judge dismiss a federal lawsuit on behalf of seven current and former police officers who say the city shouldn't have released their personal information to a gang associate their work helped put in prison, according to the Tribune, which accessed the court filing.

While acknowledging the argument as sourced from fiction, the city’s lawyers claim the quote fits the case at hand: officers suing the city and its former records manager for mailing largely unredacted personnel files in October 2015 to an inmate in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Tribune reported.

The officers argue putting their private, personal and protected information in the hands of a violent felon with a network of gang associates placed the officers and their families in danger, causing them emotional distress and prompting them to spend money on security measures, according to the newspaper.

 

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