A San Diego judge has ordered the City of Chula Vista to pay over $500,000 in legal fees after losing a groundbreaking four-year legal battle over public access to police drone videos, delivering a costly lesson in transparency that could reshape how law enforcement agencies nationwide handle drone footage requests.
Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal awarded attorney Cory Briggs $499,114 on October 9th for successfully representing La Prensa San Diego publisher Arturo Castañares in a lawsuit that established new statewide precedent requiring California police departments to review drone videos case-by-case rather than withholding them under blanket exemptions.
Historic Legal Battle Ends With Expensive Precedent
The case began in May 2021 when Castañares requested copies of Chula Vista Police Department drone videos from March 2021—just one month of footage from what was then the nation’s first FAA-authorized drone-as-first-responder program. The city’s response? A categorical denial claiming all drone footage qualified as “investigative records” exempt from California’s Public Records Act.
That blanket refusal triggered years of costly litigation that bounced between trial courts, the California Court of Appeals, and twice to the state Supreme Court. In December 2023, the Appeals Court published a landmark ruling rejecting Chula Vista’s position, establishing that police must evaluate each video individually rather than hiding behind categorical exemptions…