Here's the fuller story: The Cuyahoga's Recorder's Office charged $2 per page... even when it was simply a CD full of documents. That literally meant they were

Here's the fuller story: The Cuyahoga's Recorder's Office charged $2 per page... even when it was simply a CD full of documents. That literally meant they were charging over $200,000 for a single CD of publicly available documents. The companies that needed these documents were understandably frustrated. That's why they sued. The recorder's office spent $55,000 of taxpayer's money defending themselves... and they lost. The person refusing to acknowledge what a photocopier is, was Lawrence Patterson. He was head of information technology for the recorder's office, and even after the loss of the case was still working for the county on a salary of $65,000(!). The lawyer questioning him was David Marburger. He pointed out afterwards that if the recorder's office had just accepted the more reasonable sum of $50 per CD, which the companies suing the recorder's office had offered, they would have made $25,000 -- instead they lost $55,000. Marburger has said of the video that the emotions were all wrong: "I actually wanted [Patterson] to keep up what I perceived as a charade. Once he chose the path that he took, I didn't want a straight answer; I wanted him to keep it going. That was why I kept pushing over the course of 10 pages of transcript. To me, the testimony became too good to be true. It was perfect." He also said that Patterson wasn't the slightest bit intimidated in real life. Marburger used the absurd testimony to win the case, and the court unanimously agreed that they only charge $1 per CD moving forward. -- thunderpeel2001