Franklin already at work on new lawsuit, she tells News Leader
As it turns out, the 12th Judicial Circuit Court judge presiding over a Laurel Park resident’s complaint against the City of Sarasota regarding the minutes of a 2024 meeting issued a ruling faster than she had anticipated after a May 26 hearing.
And while the judge — Dana Moss — agreed with the Recommended Order that General Magistrate Medisa M. Turner had issued in April, she disagreed on one key point: Moss dismissed Kelly Franklin’s complaint “without prejudice.” The latter phrase means that Franklin can file an amended version of the lawsuit, which formally was a Petition for Writ of Mandamus.
Moss also made clear that she was overruling each of three Exceptions that Franklin had filed to the Recommended Order. Those were related to Florida Statute 286.011(2), which “requires that minutes ‘reflect the events’ of public meetings,” as Franklin had written; as well as Florida Attorney General opinions that Franklin reported that she had found pertinent to her arguments.
Franklin has contended that the approved minutes of the City Commission meeting conducted on Jan. 16, 2024 incorrectly include her name in providing details about a presentation that Commissioner Kyle Battie had made under the agenda heading, “Civility, Respect and Rhetoric,” as The Sarasota News Leaderhas reported.
Neither Battie — who is African American — nor anyone else during that business item cited Franklin by name.
Battie and Tanya Borysiewicz, co-owner of the Corona Cigar Co. in downtown Sarasota — whom Battie identified on Jan. 16, 2024 as half African-American — showed those watching the meeting — in person and online — a crumpled piece of paper that Borysiewicz reported to have received in the mail. It appeared to be a printout of a Facebook post from Franklin’s personal page with the heading, “Gorillas in the midst of being gorillas are on my mind.”
The printout included a photo of with Borysiewicz and Battie, when he was serving as mayor, as they were engaged in the September 2023 ribbon-cutting for the opening of the Corona Cigar Co.
During the meeting, city commissioners later talked of having received emails from Franklin that day, asserting that she had had nothing to do with what she has maintained was a “hoax post.” Franklin has described it as a “mash-up” of a post she did add to her Facebook page in December 2022 — which included photos she had taken of gorillas in Rwanda — plus the Corona Cigar Co. ribbon-cutting image.
The Rwanda gorillas are an international attraction. Franklin and her husband had traveled to the African nation so she could photograph the primates, she has explained.
Over the past two years, Franklin has made numerous attempts to persuade the City Commission to remove her name from the minutes of the Jan. 16, 2024 meeting.
During the May 26 oral arguments before Judge Moss, Franklin referenced the image that Battie and Borysiewicz presented to the commissioners. “My name shows up in search engines right next to this vivid and fabricated account of this image made from my bucket list vacation photos.”
Franklin added, “The depravity of this act makes it hard to even talk about. … And [the fact that] we’re still paying money to have a city lawyer try to justify this and try to smear me some more in court is astonishing to me.”
Jay Daigneault, of the Clearwater firm Trask Daigneault, has been representing the city in the litigation, which Franklin launched in November 2025. He raised his voice in responding to that assertion, telling Moss, “I haven’t smeared anybody!”
Franklin also maintains that the Battie’s Jan. 16, 2024 presentation of the “hoax post” was a result of collusion at City Hall.
However, Daigneault has argued that Franklin has no legal basis to call for the City Commission to eliminate her name from the minutes.
“What mandamus requires,” Daigneault told Judge Moss, referring to the type of complaint Franklin had filed, “is a compulsion to do so, and there isn’t one in the law …”
General Magistrate Turner wrote in her April 9 Recommended Order,
that, on Dec. 4, 2025, the city filed its motion to dismiss the case, “asserting that, for purposes of this motion, they accept as true that the post in question was a ‘hoax’ not authored by [Franklin]. Notwithstanding this assumed fact,” Turner continued, the city “contends that the minutes accurately summarize what happened at the city commission meeting and do not necessitate correction.”
“Furthermore,” Turner pointed out, “even if the minutes were subject to correction, [the city] argues that [Franklin] has not demonstrated a clear legal entitlement to such correction, nor has she established that the [city] has a definitive legal obligation to amend the minute entry.”
In response to a News Leader request for a comment on the judge’s June 1 ruling, Jan Thornburg, general manager of the Communications Department, wrote in a June 3 email, “Due to the potential for future litigation related to this matter, we’ll defer making a statement.”
Franklin already planning new complaint
Franklin did provide a statement to the News Leader, in regard to Moss’ order, with emphasis as shown below:
“[The June 1] ruling is significant in ways the headline may not fully capture. Judge Moss dismissed the case without prejudice, which is a meaningful distinction. She explicitly declined to leave the dismissal ‘with prejudice.’ That tells me she recognized that the City Charter itself, which was not in the original record, imposes mandatory duties on the City Auditor and Clerk that a court may ultimately be required to enforce.
“The City of Sarasota adopted new Rules of Procedure on May 4, 2026 (Resolution 26R-3393),” Franklin noted. “Those updated rules now explicitly list ‘Approval of Minutes’ as an agenda category, and separately confirm that the City Auditor and Clerk is the official responsible for preparing the agenda and ensuring the record of proceedings is brought before the Commission for ratification. That is not a discretionary function.
“The Charter at Article VI, Section 5(a) uses the word ‘shall’ and expressly prescribes the correction mechanism: corrections to the record are certified by a Commission vote at a subsequent meeting. Section 5(b) makes the Clerk ‘responsible for the proper administration of all affairs concerning the records of the city.’ Section 5(g) makes agenda preparation mandatory,” Franklin wrote.
“Put plainly: under the Charter, [the state’s] Sunshine Law, public records law, and the state statute criminalizing the falsification of public meeting minutes — Florida Statute § 839.13 — it is the City Auditor and Clerk’s legal obligation to ensure the minutes are accurate and to place any needed correction before the Commission.”
Franklin added, “The city has spent over two years arguing it has no obligation to do that. If the public cannot trust that the official record of what happened at a city meeting accurately reflects what happened, they cannot trust city governance at all.
“What makes this case particularly troubling,” she continued, “is the timing and the nature of the fabrication itself. The evidence shows the minutes were augmented with a fictional account the day after the January 16, 2024 meeting. While city staff engaged in creative writing with the official record of the meeting, the Sarasota Observer was reporting — accurately — that the image at issue was a hoax.”
“Critically,” Franklin pointed out, “the inserted entry is unique in the record: unlike every other entry made by the Clerk’s office for that meeting, it contains no reference to any time-stamped statement from the real-time transcript. Every legitimate entry can be traced to the transcript. This one cannot, because it was invented after the fact — not a reflection of anything that actually occurred during the meeting.”
Further, Franklin wrote, “The city attorney has now acknowledged in court that the image is a hoax, while simultaneously continuing to suggest its authorship remains an open question. That combination — conceding the falsity while sustaining the insinuation — continues to cause harm. Under federal civil rights law, that ongoing conduct strengthens, not weakens, potential claims. A federal complaint has been drafted.”
During the May 26 oral arguments in the case, city attorney Daigneault read to Judge Moss statements he had made during the Feb. 11 hearing that General Magistrate Turner had conducted in the case; those statements were included in the transcript of that proceeding.
One section said, “I think, for purposes of today’s hearing, the Court is required to take … as true” Franklin’s assertion that the social media post was a hoax.
Daigneault noted that he added later on Feb. 11, “The city is conceding, for the purpose of this motion, that the … social media post is a hoax. Whether it is or it isn’t if the case moves beyond this hearing, you know, presumably, it will be subject to some discovery.”
Franklin continued in her June 2 statement to the News Leader, “The city’s litigation posture has essentially been: even if the minutes contain something that never happened and that everyone agrees never happened, we have no legal duty to fix it. Judge Moss’s refusal to foreclose further litigation suggests that position may not hold up.
I intend to pursue justice in state court on Sunshine Law and public records grounds — where the prevailing party can recover attorney’s fees — and, if necessary, in federal court as well.”
She concluded her statement as follows: “The correction the city refuses to make would take five minutes. Every month it refuses, it adds to the record of willful indifference to the rule of law.”