Legal Briefs: News from around the state

Former New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Lawrence Gagnon is stepping into a new role as Revenue Counsel for the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration (NHDRA). In this position within the NHDRA’s Legal Bureau, Gagnon will provide legal guidance to the department to uphold fair taxation for New Hampshire residents.

Lawrence Gagnon

“NHDRA is pleased to welcome Lawrence to our team as our new Revenue Counsel,” said Lindsey Stepp, Commissioner, NHDRA, in a statement. “His extensive background in tax law and a well-established history of supporting individuals and small businesses, make him exceptionally well-suited for this role.”

Prior to joining NHDRA, Gagnon worked for two years as an assistant attorney general within the Civil Litigation Unit at the New Hampshire Department of Justice. There, he managed defense lawsuits for a number of state agencies, including cases involving education funding, administrative appeals, personnel disputes, civil rights, property rights, personal injury and contracts. In this role, he also managed debt recovery efforts and litigation on behalf of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services.

Dover firm honored by Best Lawyers

Burns, Bryant, Cox, Rockefeller & Durkin, P.A. has been listed by Best Lawyers in its Best Law Firms tier 1 rankings for 2024 in the area of personal injury law.

The 2024 rankings are based on Best Law Firms’ proven methodology that relies on qualitative and quantitative data on legal skillset, achievements and client successes collected through a submission process managed by Best Lawyers. The rankings highlight a unique combination of high-quality law practices and the full breadth of legal expertise that has always been differentiated by the credibility and transparent rankings process developed by Best Lawyers.

Christine M. Rockefeller, Matthew B. Cox, John E. Durkin and Sarah E. Lavoie of the firm Burns, Bryant, Cox, Rockefeller & Durkin have all been listed in Best Lawyers in the field of personal injury

Enormous public records requests may come with a $25-an-hour-search fee

Towns, cities, the state, and other public bodies can charge for copies when they provide someone documents in response to a right-to-know request. They’d also be able to charge up to $25 an hour to search for those records if that search took more than 40 hours under legislation expected to go before lawmakers next year.

Similar legislation was nearly introduced last year, but the sponsor, Rep. Michael Cahill, a Newmarket Democrat, withdrew it after several groups, including the ACLU of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Press Association, and the libertarian conservative group Americans for Prosperity, opposed it.

Rep. Katelyn Kuttab, a Windham Republican, said she is pursuing search fees for the same reasons Cahill considered it: Public officials are getting an increasing number of expansive requests that seek hundreds of pages of documents and emails and take hours to fill, often at considerable expense.

Kuttab said she learned of requests from an out-of-state solar panel company seeking decades of town building permits. “They don’t live here,” Kuttab said of the person seeking information. “They want to sell solar panels and our taxpayers are paying.”

— NH BULLETIN