Magistrate to preside over Zoom event
A 12th Judicial Circuit Court hearing has been scheduled for Feb. 11, 2026 in a case that a Laurel Park resident launched this fall against the City of Sarasota over the commissioners’ refusal to correct minutes of the board’s regular meeting of Jan. 16, 2024.
Thirty minutes has been reserved for the Zoom proceeding before Magistrate Medisa Turner, a court document shows.
The announcement followed the filing earlier this month of the city’s response to Kelly Franklin’s Writ of Mandamus, seeking a court order for the city to correct the minutes, and the filing of the city’s response.
The hearing will begin at 11 a.m., the notice says.
The notice was filed with the court on Dec. 12.
As The Sarasota News Leader has reported, Franklin has maintained that her name never was mentioned during a presentation by Commissioner Kyle Battie, characterized on the Jan. 16, 2024 agenda as pertaining to civility, respect and rhetoric. Battie and a co-owner of the Corona Cigar Co. on Lemon Avenue in downtown Sarasota told the other city commissioners that the co-owner, Tanya Borysiewicz, had received a copy of racist Facebook post. Battie identified Borysiewicz as “half African American.”
Although Franklin’s name was atop the printed copy of that alleged post that Battie showed everyone in the City Commission Chambers — and those watching on TV and online — neither he nor Borysiewicz spoke Franklin’s name.
Franklin emailed all of the city commissioners, explaining that the post appeared to be a “mash-up” of a post she had placed on her personal Facebook page, featuring photos of gorillas that she had taken herself on a trip to Rwanda, and a post showing a photo of Battie, as mayor, celebrating the formal opening of the Corona Cigar Co. in downtown Sarasota. She had had nothing to do with the “hoax post,” she asserted.
The city’s response to Franklin’s writ — filed by Jay Daigneault, of the Trask Daigneault law firm in Clearwater, on Dec. 4 — contends that, in spite of the fact that “no apparent inaccuracy” exists in the minutes of that Jan. 16, 2024 meeting, Franklin has argued “that she has a clear legal right to accurate meeting minutes,” in accord with Sections 286.011 and 119.021 of the Florida Statutes.
Yet, Daigneault maintains, with emphasis, that Franklin “cannot establish anylegal duty on the part of the City to produce accurate minutes or correct inaccurate minutes, much less an indisputable legal duty, so the Petition must be dismissed.”
Daigneault does acknowledge, “As it must, the City accepts as true that the post/photograph was a ‘hoax’ ” that Franklin did not create. “This concession, however, does not render the minutes inaccurate,” he writes. “There is no allegation that the minutes recorded do not accurately reflect in summary fashion what occurred at the January 16, 2024, City Commission meeting,” he adds.
Citing the 2008 Florida Third District Court of Appeal ruling in Bailem v. State and the 2000 Florida Supreme Court decision in Huffman v. State, Daigneault contends, “It is blackletter law that ‘[t]o be entitled to a writ of mandamus, [1] the petitioner must have a clear legal right to the requested relief, [2] the respondent must have an indisputable legal duty to perform the requested action, and [3] the petitioner must have no other adequate legal remedy.”
He also points out, “ ‘[M]andamus may be used only to enforce a clear and certain right; it may not be used to establish such a right …’ ” That is a finding in the 2018 Florida First District Court of Appeal decision in Romine v. Allen, Daigneault adds.
Further, he argues, Franklin is “without appropriate legal support, and without sufficient allegations of ultimate fact,” to plead her case.
Daigneault notes that, in a registered letter she sent to the city on July 21, Franklin wrote that a “forensic analysis of the social media post/photograph indicates that it was ‘falsified.’ … In that same letter, Franklin added the following,” he continues, with emphasis: “The uncorrected publication of the hoax Facebook post with my name and likeness continues to harm my reputation, and hinders my ability to participate effectively in local civic discussions.”
Further, Daigneault points out, she acknowledged in the letter that Commissioner Battie prevailed in a court case last year in which she sued him for defamation.
As the News Leader has explained, the judge presiding over that case cited judicial precedents that the judge said had given elected officials immunity from allegations of defamation when they were performing work associated with their positions.
In her July 21 letter to the city, Daigneault continues, Franklin “went on to note that ‘the city’s liability for the city’s willing refusal to correct knowingly false libelous statements within an official document has not been tested. … Failure to act at this point would suggest that my only recourse is to file a tort suit for specific relief, as well as nonfeasance and negligence for refusing to investigate the true authorship of the image and how it came to be published in city hall.’ ”
She is incorrect in asserting that “ ‘[j]udicial intervention is necessary to compel the [City’s] performance of its statutory and procedural obligations,’ ” he adds.
“Though [Franklin] is clearly aggrieved by what occurred at the City Commission meeting, she does not contend that the minutes do not accurately summarize what happened at the meeting, so there is no need to correct them even if such relief can be compelled by mandamus,” Daigneault contends. “The Petition can and should be dismissed on this basis alone.”
He further argues that Franklin is incorrect in asserting that Sections 286.011 and 119.21 of the Florida Statutes “ ‘mandate that minutes of public meetings be true and correct public records …’ ” In fact, Daigneault contends, “The word ‘minutes’ does not appear at all in the text of [Section 119.021]. The statute is explicitly directed to the manner in which public records must be maintained and preserved by those persons and agencies required to do so. It neither speaks to the accuracy of any such public record nor provides any person, including Petitioner, with a clear legal right to demand such accuracy or compel correction of alleged inaccuracies. Accordingly, the Petition fails inasmuch as it is based upon this statute.”
Moreover, he points out, Section 286.011 includes the word “ ‘minutes’ … exactly once,” in specifying that “ ‘[t]he minutes of a meeting of any such board or commission … shall be promptly recorded, and such records shall be open to public inspection’ (emphasis supplied). … The accuracy or inaccuracy of the minutes is not addressed at all, and courts are not permitted to add words to statutes that were not placed there by the [Legislature] or revise unambiguous statutes by engrafting their own views about how it should have been written.” Daigneault cited a 2009 Florida Second District Court of Appeal ruling to support that argument.
He does acknowledge that the City Commission’s “governing rules of procedure” require “accurate and complete recording of minutes.” However, Daigneault argues that neither the city’s Code of Ordinances, nor Robert’s Rules of Order nor the city’s Rules of Procedure for commission meetings “[offers] relief to Petitioner.”
A contention of fundamental mischaracterization
In her Dec. 8 response to the city’s request that the court dismiss her motion, Franklin writes, “The Motion fundamentally mischaracterizes both the nature of the false information in [the Jan. 16, 2024] minutes and the City’s legal duty under Florida law to maintain accurate public records. The Motion fails to address the core factual predicate: the City’s own meeting minutes falsely attribute authorship of a defamatory social media post to Petitioner Kelly Franklin, when [the city] itself concedes that [she] did not author the post.”
The city, she points out, “cannot simultaneously argue that (1) the post is a hoax [that she did not create], and (2) the minutes containing false attribution to [her] are accurate. These positions are logically irreconcilable.”
Franklin continues to assert that “[w]hen meeting minutes contain materially false information misrepresenting what transpired at a public meeting, the City has a clear legal duty — grounded in the Florida Constitution, the Sunshine Law, and the Public Records Act — to correct that false information through formal procedures required by Florida law.”
She contends that the city’s argument that “ ‘there is no allegation that the minutes as recorded do not accurately reflect in summary fashion what occurred at the January 16, 2024, City Commission meeting’ … is demonstrably false and contradicts the undisputed facts presented” in her petition and exhibits.
She provides an exhibit to underscore her argument:
Then Franklin points out that her “allegation is straightforward: the minutes falsely assert that the photograph came ‘from Kelly Franklin’s social media page.’ ” That assertion “is materially and demonstrably inaccurate.”
In fact, she references a section of the city’s response to underscore her claim: The city motion “explicitly states that ‘the post/photograph was a “hoax” not authored by [Franklin] and acknowledges that [Franklin] ‘has been informed verbally and in writing that [Franklin] is not the post’s author.’ ”
“If, as [the city] concedes, the post is a hoax and [she] did not author it, then the minutes’ assertion that the photograph came ‘from Kelly Franklin’s social media page’ is factually false,” Franklin argues. “This is not a matter of legal interpretation, statutory construction or discretionary judgment. It is a false statement of objective fact recorded in an official public document maintained by [the city].”
Moreover, she contends, the city argument “that the minutes merely summarize what Commissioner Battie said, and therefore require no correction … conflates reporting what an official alleged with recording it as fact in the official public record.”
She included quotes from a transcript of the Jan. 16, 2024 meeting to underscore her contention, noting that they demonstrate “that Commissioner Battie himself expressed profound doubt about the post’s authenticity on over 17 occasions during the meeting:”
Among other assertions about the need for the correction of the minutes, Franklin notes, “The false information continues to be part of the official public record, misleading citizens, researchers, and legal system participants.”
She adds, “The foundational principle underlying all Florida open government law is the public trust doctrine. Florida’s Constitution provides: ‘A public officer is a public trust. The people shall have the right to secure and sustain that trust against abuse,’ ” citing Article II, Section 8, of the Florida Constitution.
“This principle imposes fiduciary duties on elected officials and governmental entities to maintain accurate records and to be transparent about governmental actions,” Franklin points out. “When the City becomes aware that its official minutes contain materially false information and fails to correct that information,” Franklin continues, “it breaches its fiduciary duty to the public. The public trust is not merely aspirational; it is enforceable through mandamus and other equitable remedies.”