Laman v. McCord

On April 24, 1967, the members of the city council of North Little Rock, Arkansas, went into closed session following a regular meeting of the city council. The purpose of the closed session meeting was to discuss litigation with the city attorney. Editor Robert McCord and the managing editor of a North Little Rock newspaper (collectively, the editors) (plaintiffs) filed suit against W. F. Laman, the city’s mayor (defendant), alleging that the city council did not have the authority to meet privately with the city attorney in closed session and that the closed-session meeting violated Arkansas’s open-meetings law. The editors noted that the open-meetings law expressly provided that public business must be performed openly and in a manner accessible to the public so that the electors can review the performance of public officials. The editors further noted that, unlike the open-meetings laws of other states, Arkansas’s open-meetings law did not provide an exception for the city council to meet in closed session to discuss litigation with the city attorney. In response, Laman asserted that Arkansas’s open-meetings law was a penal statute because it provided that a violation could constitute a misdemeanor punishable by a fine or a jail sentence and, therefore, its language had to be strictly construed. The trial court held in favor of the media, and Laman appealed.