CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Sunoco attorney in Toledo demands that Ohio Citizen Action members pay his legal fees.

"Sunoco's Toledo attorney filed papers with a Toledo court on December 14, demanding that Ohio Citizen Action members pay his legal fees. Louis Tosi had previously subpoenaed Citizen Action demanding that the organization turn over to him all health questionnaires, including personal medical information, about Sunoco neighbors, with their names and addresses."

MR. TOSI, CALL YOUR OFFICE: DOUBLE STANDARD AT SHUMAKER, LOOP

While Sunoco attorney Louis Tosi has been trying to force Citizen Action to turn over confidential health interviews from neighbors of Sunoco's Toledo-area refinery, other lawyers at his own firm -- Shumaker, Loop and Kendrick -- recently convinced the Ohio Supreme Court to protect the "source confidentiality" of a Toledo radio news director who fed a sex rumor about a Toledo Blade reporter to the station's morning talk show host... who was then sued by the reporter for repeating it on the air.

As the Shumaker, Loop website proudly reports:

TOM PLETZ of the Toledo office spoke at the Toledo Bar Association "Media Law Seminar" November 8, 2004 on the subject of the Ohio "reporter's shield" law, which protects news reporters from being required to disclose the identitiy of their news sources in court.

Tom and NEEMA BELL (Toledo) obtained a ruling from the Supreme Court of Ohio November 1, 2004, which protected a Clear Channel Broadcasting radio station news director from disclosing the identity of a news source who had provided a tip. The Supreme Court merit decision without opinion effectively extinguished an earlier adverse Sixth District Court of Appeals' opinion which had construed the statute quite narrowly, and which would have required the Clear Channel news reporter to name her source.

The case (Svoboda v Clear Channel Communications, Inc.) was summarized here last March, when the Sixth District Court of Appeals upheld a Lucas County Common Pleas Court order telling WVKS news director Tricia Tischler to reveal the name of her source for the rumor about Blade reporter Sandra Svoboda ... essentially because it wasn't actually "news". That's the decision that Shumaker, Loop lawyers just got overturned.

More of the gory details of the lawsuit can be found here.

So to sum up, here's the position of Mr. Tosi's law firm:

1) The right of a radio news director and talk show host to protect the source of a scurrilous sexual rumor about a rival reporter is absolute, and must be defended all the way up to the Supreme Court; but

2) The right of citizens who provide private medical information to a civic organization's health survey to have that information held in confidence is a "frivolous" claim, and the organization's efforts to defend that claim should be punished, financially and criminally.

You gotta have principles.