Superior Court Judge Howard Manning gave a victory of sorts to Gov. Bev Perdue by ruling that her policy mandating the preservation of e-mails is consistent with North Carolina open records laws.
On the other hand, the News & Observer reports, Manning refused a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a number of media organizations seeking e-mails destroyed en masse by Perdue’s embattled predecessor Mike Easley. (The John Locke Foundation, publisher of Carolina Journal, is a party in that lawsuit.)
Manning observed that a next step in the case could be for the state to
provide the lawyers for the media organizations documents through
discovery that could prove uncomfortable for Easley, who is now under
scrutiny by both state election officials and federal prosecutors for
alleged campaign finance violations and influence peddling.
More on the lawsuit here.
