Lyme Science Emails (UCSF)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the California Public Records Act, I hereby request the following records:

All emails from or to the email address vwormser@fresno.ucsf.edu (or any other address used by Dr. Worsmer) regarding or mentioning lyme disease, specifically but not limited to any emails referencing in any way the website Lymescience.org or the name Justin McLachlan.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 calendar days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Justin Sparks

You are requested and required to search all available email records for any response to my request. Cal. Gov. Code § 6253 only requires that my request “... reasonably describes an identifiable record or records.” Your agency is obligated to comply so long as the record can be located with reasonable effort. Cal. First Amendment Coal. v. Superior Court, 67 Cal. App. 4th 159, 166, 78 Cal. Rptr. 847 (1998).

I cannot know which dates emails were sent if you refuse to search for them. To make it easier, you may, in the alternative, send every record in the email account referenced above since the account was created, and I will search it myself. I am familiar with your email systems and the entire account can be exported in a file that I can easily access. However, it seems it would be preferable, on your end, to simply conduct the search as requested and required and provide only the records I have specifically requested.

Any continued refusal to search for records based on the above will result in immediate litigation to compel compliance. Please note that the CPRA requires a court to "award costs and reasonable attorney fees" to a plaintiff who prevails in proceedings to compel disclosure of public records pursuant to CPRA. Cal. Gov't Code § 6259(d). The award of costs and fees is mandatory. Bernardi v. Cty. of Monterey, 167 Cal. App. 4th 1379, 1393, 84 Cal. Rptr. 3d 754 (2008).

To Whom It May Concern:

It has been several weeks with no response or acknowledgment to our follow-ups. This request is past due and you are risking imminent litigation to compel compliance. Please respond and update the status of this request within the next three business days.

Sincerely

You misunderstand my request. If you will not search the requested email box for responsive records, I am amending my request to include the entirety of Dr. Worsmer's email box. Exemptions to the PRA are discretionary, you are under no obligation to review the records at all, they are inherently public.

I also do not understand why Dr. Worsmer would be using an insecure medium like email to transmit protected health information. There is no exemption to the PRA for "scholarly information," whatever you mean by that. I also dispute your assertion that Dr. Worsmer is a lyme disease researcher whose email would be filled to the brim with information about Lyme disease to the point that you can't even search through it. Her own UCSF profile lists three publications, and a grand total of one relates to Lyme disease. Searches in Pubmed and Google scholar also do not return any evidence that Dr. Worsmer has had anything close to a significant research career, nor that she could generate the amount of email on Lyme disease as to be so burdensome you can't process let alone even search through the emails.

What's more, none of your objections would apply to the search term "lymescience.org" unless Dr. Worsmer is communicating an excessive with and or regarding this site? Is that your representation? There are too many emails with that search term as well?

The statutory timeline for the production of these records has passed. If you continue to refuse to respond, I will seek a court order compelling compliance on Tuesday, January 20, 2021.

Thank you for your response, I have repeatedly declined to narrow my request, and decline to do so now. I'm not sure you'd need my permission to search for the specific terms and produce records that are relevant, and it should've been done by now. The statutory deadline for these records has past and your continued refusal to produce any records, even now that you admit, after weeks of delays and stalling and denying that you "...can conduct a search pursuant to CPRA for emails to/from a specific domain, such as “Lymescience.org” – or emails to/from a specific individual such as “Justin McLahlan (sic)”.

Why has that not been done? Why did UCSF repeatedly refuse to take this step? This request is clearly not being handled in good faith. You are required to produce any records responsive to my request. Believing, even erroneously that some records are exempt or that certain searches don't have to be undertaken, does not absolve you of the requirement to disclose other records.

And again, for the record — Dr. Worsmer is not a Lyme disease researcher. She is a PGY-3 resident who was a second author on a single Lyme disease paper published years before she began her residency at UCSF. Please expect an additional request for all IRB records related to Dr. Worsmer's supposed Lyme disease research. It is highly unlikely, and would be suspect under ACGME guidelines, that Dr. Wormser is spending any consequential amount of time conducting so much Lyme disease research — to the detriment of her clinical training — particularly when she's not published a single paper on the topic for the last five years or nearly any papers at all since her residency began. Dr. Wormser is not even training in infectious disease, it's unclear why the UCSF program would permit so much research activity that even searching her email for the term would be burdensome. This excuse is wearing quite thin, and I'm quite confident I can prove to a court that it is specious, at best.

Thank you, for finally, doing what I asked. Imagine if you'd done that in the first place instead of spending two months wasting time. I am, still, deeply concerned about the -- at best -- misleading representations made in the course of handling this request and do not consider the matter closed.

Sincerely,
Justin McLachlan

Mr. Dellner,

In a separate PRA request, the University has now mostly confirmed that your representations regarding Dr. Wormser's research activities at UCSF were, at best, inaccurate. The University says it has no responsive records to a request for Dr. Worsmer's research materials, such as IRB approvals, etc.

Can you please provide any documentation that would support your earlier statements regarding Dr. Wormser's status as a Lyme disease researcher to me regarding this request? You may consider this a new and separate request under the PRA and your response is required within 10 business days.

Government Code section 19572 specifies that employee dishonesty constitutes a cause for discipline, and an employee who engages in “other failure of good behavior that causes discredit to the employee’s agency or employment” is also subject to discipline.

Sincerely,
Justin McLachlan

Mr. Dellner--

In your response, you state: "Specifically, PRA 020-148 was submitted as a request for all email mentioning the term “Lyme disease”.

This is patently false. The original text of the request is available to you, and I'd appreciate it if you'd take the time to ensure accuracy in your responses. The original request asked for "[a]ll emails from or to the email address vwormser@fresno.ucsf.edu (or any other address used by Dr. Worsmer) regarding or mentioning Lyme disease, specifically but not limited to any emails referencing in any way the website Lymescience.org or the name Justin McLachlan." The university was absolutely, 100 percent never asked to "for all email mentioning the term 'Lyme disease.'" I would remind you that Government Code section 19572 specifies that employee dishonesty constitutes a cause for discipline, and an employee who engages in “other failure of good behavior that causes discredit to the employee’s agency or employment” is also subject to discipline.

In response to my original request, you said: "As you may know, Dr. Wormser is a published author who has research papers on NIH/PubMed regarding lyme disease (sic). Your request seeks every email that she has ever sent or received regarding or mentioning lyme disease (sic)." You then claimed that to even make a determination under the PRA was not possible because the request would be "unduly burdensome" and compelled “... the production of a huge volume of material.” Please note that you said "papers" not "paper."

As it turns out, Dr. Worsmer has engaged in no research at UCSF. As it turns out, one email was responsive to my request. One. I have endeavored to turn up other records that may have supported your contentions, and though the university is again unlawfully delaying the production of records in response to my requests, it turns out there are no other records. Nothing to support any of the statements you made and the excuses you used to attempt to deny the public access to UCSF's records.

You held this request and refused to comply for nearly 60 days, and I'm only trying to figure out why. I want to be 100 percent clear. Your explanation seems to me to be 1) you never bothered to understand the original request so you could respond properly and 2) you invented a pretext to support someone else's conclusion that the request was too broad, and then finally had to conduct the search I requested when you realized you had no evidence to support even the pretext?

Who made the original determination that the request was overly broad if it wasn't you? Was it Ms. Gee? She is coming into focus as a bottleneck for many of the problems it seems the public encounters with UCSF when making public records act requests.

Sincerely,
Justin McLachlan