OTTAWA COUNTY AGREES TO TURN OVER DOCUMENTS TO MEDICAL MARIJUANA LAW
RESEARCHER

GRAND HAVEN - After telling a Traverse City-based researcher of
Michigan's voter-approved medical marijuana law that he could not have
its records, the Ottawa County Prosecutor's Office has turned over
some 700 pages of materials.

Eric VanDussen sent Michigan Freedom of Information Act requests to
all 83 of the state's county prosecutors asking for information
regarding marijuana prohibition law violations where the accused was
using the medical marijuana law as a defense.

While some of the prosecutors asked for stiff fees related to
compiling the information -- Livingston County sent a bill for $94,000
- - only Ottawa and Kalkaska counties flat out turned VanDussen down, he
said today.

VanDussen, 36, sees the record release as a positive step for his
efforts to show that the medical marijuana law is not equally
enforced, but Doug Van Essen, trial council for Ottawa County, said
the problem was the request was too broad and asked for some materials
not subject to public disclosure.

"When (Ottawa County) said they didn't have anything to give me, they
were obviously mistaken," VanDussen said.

VanDussen made his request on Sept. 9 and a day later, the county
replied in an e-mail that "The prosecutor's files are not public,
there fore we are not able to provide you with the
information."

On Oct. 1, attorney Gregory Rappleye, corporate counsel for Ottawa
County, sent VanDussen a letter saying that the materials were "exempt
from disclosure under the Attorney Work-Product privilege."

Rappleye cited a case filed in Lansing and heard by the State Supreme
Court regarding the calculation of legal fees in a civil suit from
1999.

On March 1, VanDussen filed a lawsuit against the Ottawa County
Prosecutor in Traverse County where he claimed that the county
violated the State FOIA. The suit asked a judge to find that the
county "arbitrarily and capriciously" violated the law, that the
information should be provided and that it pay $500 in punitive
damages. Instead, VanDussen said Ottawa County provided the
information he sought for free. Van Essen said the problem was that
VanDussen seemed to be seeking the files of the prosecutor which may
contain internal notes about a case.

Instead, the two sides were able to define that what VanDussen wanted
was police reports and court filings and it was a fairly simple action
to get the information to the Traverse City man.

"FOIA is a technical act and we had a technical denial," said
VanDussen.

VanDussen said he is still struggling with requests from other
counties and may have to resend FOIA requests that are more specific.
Kalkaska County has agreed to turn over records.

VanDussen has covered Northern Michigan court cases as a freelance
reporter and sued Benzie County for violating the Freedom of
Information and Open Meetings Acts - which he won.

VanDussen said he wants to see how different counties are dealing with
the charging of people who possess marijuana caregiver registrations
cards with marijuana law violations and said there appears to be a
wide disparity to how the counties react depending on the willingness
of the county prosecutor to adhere to the voter-approved law passed by
63 percent of the voters in 2008.

Van Essen said that he is not sure what the point is of showing thee
discrepancy since county prosecutors handle cases in different ways
from their cohorts across the state on many laws, medical marijuana
- -related or not.