Pity Richmond Circuit Court Judge Claire G. Cardwell and the taxpayers of Richmond.

Watching lawyers Jimmy Robinson of Ogletree Deakins and Sarah Robb of Sarah Robb Law spar in Cardwell’s courtroom on Aug. 25 made me wish I could nominate Cardwell for a local version of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The case before Cardwell concerns whether Connie Clay, a former City of Richmond Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) officer, was fired in retaliation for raising legal concerns about how her bosses in City Hall were handling FOIA requests.

Rather than appreciate that the ultimate purpose of FOIA law is to enhance democracy and build public trust by providing information to hold government accountable, far too many public officials see FOIA as a nuisance and actively look for ways to get around it.

Sometimes it is a nuisance. But sometimes fighting a FOIA request is an effort to hide wasteful spending, mismanagement, cronyism and worse.

The Connie Clay case provides an object lesson on the high price Richmond has paid, both literally and figuratively, for years. It also provides an opportunity for Richmond’s new mayor to set a new tone for city government, a tone that emphasizes transparency and a respect for a citizen’s right to know what city government is doing.

Whistleblower claim

This case was filed in March 2024 and has been on a slow (and expensive) stroll to trial.

By the end of May 2025, the city’s defense of this lawsuit, outsourced to the private law firm of Ogletree Deakins, had cost taxpayers $234,111.35. That number will certainly increase by the time the firm submits its billing for this summer, and the three-day trial scheduled for later this month from Sept. 23-25.

By comparison, City Attorney Laura Drewry is paid $323,000, which is up from her predecessor’s salary of $255,000 (a 27% increase) and more than the combined salaries of Richmond’s mayor and Virginia’s attorney general. Judge Cardwell’s salary of $203,540, as of July 1, is set by the Virginia General Assembly.

Clay is being represented by Sarah Robb Law, a single-person law firm specializing in employment law. On behalf of her client, Robb is asking for Clay’s job back, $250,000 in compensatory damages and attorney fees. Their salaries and bills are not available under FOIA law. In contrast, Ogletree Deakins employs more than 1,050 lawyers in 60 offices across the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Europe, according to its website.

A 1984 graduate of Howard University, Clay earned a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1987. She worked for the City of Richmond from July 2023 until January 2024. She maintains that her immediate boss, Petula Burks, the former director of strategic communications and civic engagement, told her she was being fired simply because she “wasn’t a good fit.”

Clay disagrees, saying she was fired because she wouldn’t violate FOIA and refused to be silent about it. She says that Burks justified withholding potentially damaging documents in violation of the law because she “didn’t want the city to look stupid.”

Consequently, Clay filed suit in March 2024 against Burks and the city alleging her termination was in violation of the Virginia Fraud and Abuse Whistleblower Act that protects citizens and governmental employees from retaliation should they report instances of wrongdoing or illegal activities and abuse.

Clay’s claims that she is a whistleblower are buttressed by documentation in the court record showing memos she wrote pinpointing possible legal problems with the way the City was handling FOIA requests — even suggesting solutions for improvement.

She repeatedly flagged problematic FOIA responses by the city and warned her immediate bosses that, unless improvements were made in the system, the city risked being sued for failing to comply with FOIA. The law, enacted in 1968, guarantees the media and citizens the right to access to public records held by the government.

Many of the FOIA requests Clay dealt with during her tenure involved issues central to former Mayor Levar Stoney’s administration — namely the controversial meals tax and casino project.

Unusual delays with the case

Clay speculates that the 15 months of delays and difficulties getting her case heard stem from a desire of some city officials to push court dates beyond Stoney’s administration in order to avoid bad publicity during his quest for higher office.

To be sure, the journey from when she filed her lawsuit to getting her day in court has been a slow and frustrating one.

Once Cardwell denied the city’s effort to have the case dismissed outright, it appears Robinson and key city officials began a protracted game of stall ball with a surprising number of the legal equivalent of flagrant fouls.

In his reportage of the matter, Graham Moomaw of The Richmonder wrote that the  “Clay case has unfolded with unusual amounts of hostility and sniping over basic legal procedures like sharing documents with the other side and making key people available for depositions.” He noted, for example, that it took a “prolonged fight over a time and place” for the lawyers concerning when and where Burks would be deposed; Cardwell ordered that the deposition take place on Sept. 9 at the Ogletree Deakins office.

After heated skirmishes during the Aug. 25 hearing between the lawyers concerning document production and texts from personal and professional cell phones of city employees, Cardwell had heard enough. She finally told the city’s lawyers to deliver the cell phones to her so she could review them in her chambers.

Robinson blames Clay for using FOIA to get the bills showing he has charged the city close to a quarter million dollars and disseminating that information to the media.

In response, Robinson recently asked the court to issue a gag order to prevent Clay from talking to the media and to block Clay from submitting future FOIAs, i.e., to deny Clay the same FOIA rights enjoyed by all Virginians.

Cardwell has yet to rule on his request.

Meanwhile, Robinson refuses to acknowledge that RTD reporter Samuel Parker, The Richmonder’s Moomaw, former assistant City Attorney Michael Sarahan and transparency advocate Josh Stanfield, all submitted FOIA requests for the bills and all insist they did not receive the bills from Clay or her lawyers.

The court record shows that Cardwell has repeatedly admonished the lawyers during the course of this case to essentially play nice.

After a prolonged hearing to set a trial date last November, Parker wrote on X that “it took several months, multiple hostile motions and a highly contentious hearing, but we finally have a court date in the Connie Clay trial.” He quoted Cardwell saying that “this back-and-forth is not necessary … We’re all grown-ups here. You’re attorneys.”

At the Aug. 25 hearing, the judge repeatedly had to tell the attorneys to stop interrupting each other. Robb only had to be told once. Robinson, on the other hand, was cautioned multiple times. As the lawyers danced close to calling one another liars in open court, a clearly weary Cardwell put a stop to it, telling them that instead of arguing with one another, they were to argue their cases to her. She said she didn’t doubt their integrity, before calling them “both a little stubborn.”

Clay’s team continues to fight for access to text messages relevant to the case from city-issued cell phones used by Burks, former finance director Sheila White, former top administrator Sabrina Joy-Hogg and two other City Hall officials.

Although the judge has instructed the city’s legal team to provide those records, Clay’s attorneys recently complained they still hadn’t been given the documents. Robinson’s defense was that they hadn’t violated court instructions because “the judge didn’t set a deadline.”

Lawsuits and news accounts detail how during the eight years of Stoney’s administration, journalists and citizens had to threaten litigation, and in some cases, sue the city to get their FOIA requests satisfied in accord with the law and for reasonable costs.

“Reasonable costs,” like beauty, are in the eyes of the beholder.  Cost estimates during this time ranged from less than $100 to $91,000.

Here’s what’s not reasonable: Months after Levar Stoney left office, Richmond taxpayers are still picking up the tab for a lawyer and mistakes that happened on Stoney’s watch.

The latest move? The day after Labor Day, the city filed a motion trying to avoid having a jury decide the case. Having weathered the water fiasco, which he inherited too, maybe Mayor Danny Avula has a better move, given that he promised greater accountability and transparency.