Oregon Supreme Court to hear case that could reshape attorneys fees in public records suits

At the heart of the dispute is whether Oregon law authorizes a court to require public bodies in Oregon to pay “reasonable” attorneys fees and costs after they subject a public records requester who prevails in a suit against excessive delay. Oregon law orders public bodies to pay $200 penalties to records requesters if they respond to with “undue delay” or fail to respond to a request, but it stays silent on the issue of attorneys fees. Those can provide relief for individuals seeking to mount costly lawsuits to obtain obscure records.

The Oregon Court of Appeals in December 2025 had reversed a Multnomah County Circuit Court’s finding that the PETA was entitled to the money after it was subject to “undue delay” in its quest to get videos of experiments involving voles in the possession of researchers working at a university-affiliated medical center. The organization originally won $400 in penalties, as well as more than $430,000 in attorneys fees in trial court.

PETA originally took issue with an experiment analyzing the effect on prairie vole couples and mating that informed a research article published in 2017 which noted that portions of the experiment were videotaped. While the university provided PETA with other experiment-related media, it did not furnish any videos involving the voles.

After unsuccessfully petitioning the Multnomah County District Attorney, the organization turned to county court for the videos, prompting the university to unsuccessfully attempt to recover them from a laboratory-affiliated hard drive through a forensic analyst. PETA obtained access to hard drives from the lab computer through discovery and was able to recover videos responsive to its records request. The research lab’s computer was also found to have never fully deleted the videos.

In a statement, PETA called the research “an infamous sex experiment with drunken, tethered voles” and the organization in a court filing has labelled the case an “issue of law” that is of “significant consequence to the public.”

“OHSU has already wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to hide these indefensible experiments from the public eye while flushing millions down the drain on other equally cruel and pointless experiments on animals,” Tasgola Bruner, a spokesperson for the organization, said in a statement. “We’re eager for our day in court.”

A spokesperson for the university declined to comment, citing pending litigation. In one court filing, however, the university’s attorneys argued that the case was a “poor vehicle” for reviewing Oregon public records law and accused PETA of relying upon “clickbait internet articles and editorial commentary.”

“This is not a typical delay case where a public body failed to respond to a records request within five or 15 days or provided an unreasonable estimated time for production,” the university argued. “This case instead began as a denial case, in which OHSU responded to PETA’s requests timely, but denied access to the vole videos because OHSU genuinely believed they did not exist. It became a delay case only after the vole videos were later found on a hard drive produced during discovery.”

Oral arguments for the case are set for October 15. From there, it could take months for justices to issue their final opinion.

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