The Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) has found East Haven resident David Godbout to be a vexatious requester for the second time since a 2017 law created a process that allows public agencies to petition the commission to ignore Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests submitted by it claims are using public records requests to harass them for the period of a year. Godbout was also at the center of the first case brought to the FOIC after the law’s passage.
Background
The 2017 law created a process by which public agencies can bring a petition for relief from a vexatious requester (PRVR) before the FOIC. Agencies filing a petition must include details about conduct that “demonstrates a vexatious history,” including the number of requests that have been filed; their scope; the nature, content, language, or subject matter of requests and communications with the requester; and whether there is a pattern of conduct amounting to abuse of FOIA or that interferes with a public agency’s operations.
The law itself does not define what constitutes a “vexatious requester,” but the FOIC adopted language in its first ruling in a PRVR case, brought against Godbout.
In that case, the East Lyme Board of Education and the town itself detailed a conflict stretching back to 2011 and which also involved the FOIC. Between 2011 and 2016, Godbout filed 437 complaints with the FOIC alleging the town had violated FOIA. In 2016, the FOIC exercised its right to not schedule hearings in a number of Godbout’s complaints following a request from the town.
But while Godbout withdrew his complaints after that decision, East Lyme alleged in its PRVR that Godbout continued to engage in “abusive confrontations” with town employees and by 2018 had filed over 90 written FOIA requests and multiple verbal requests.
On several occasions, police escorted Godbout from various town offices after the town claimed his behavior raised security concerns. He also allegedly filed several FOIA requests under an alias, then showed up at town offices claiming to be the person who had filed the requests.
The FOIC held two hearings on East Lyme’s initial PRVR. Godbout filed multiple unsuccessful motions to try to stop the hearings and also did not introduce any evidence on his own behalf.
In its decision finding that Godbout met the definition of a vexatious requester, the FOIC addressed the lack of specific definition of that term in the 2017 law, leaning on Merriam-Webster’s common dictionary definition of the word vexatious. They also gave specific meanings to other phrases found in the law, including “pattern of conduct,” “abuse of the right to access information under the Freedom of Information Act,” and “interference with the operation of the agency,” which also appeared in the law but had no definitions.
Both the town and the East Lyme Board of Education were granted a reprieve from answering Godbout’s FOIA requests for a one-year period.
In 2022, after the FOIC again declined to schedule hearings in complaints filed by Godbout, he turned to New Britain Superior Court to challenge the constitutionality of the commission’s ability to deny hearings. The court ruled in the FOIC’s favor.
East Lyme’s Second PRVR Against Godbout
On July 30, 2024, the East Lyme Police Department, the East Lyme Board of Education, and the town of East Lyme filed another PRVR against Godbout, again claiming that his behavior was “an abuse of the right to access information” and interfered with the town’s operations.
According to the town’s petition, Godbout filed around 35 requests between January 1, 2022, and July 26, 2024, many of which were “extensive in scope” and either contained multiple parts or a “broad range of records.” In one request submitted on February 4, 2024, Godbout sent the East Lyme Police Department a request that had over forty parts and asked for things like “records of all contact” between certain individuals, the “last email sent to or received from each and every member of the Police Commission,” and internet search histories.
The commission also found that in a number of his requests, Godbout wrote “protracted diatribes” and “condescending and demanding language.” In one request, he requested records from a group he identified as the Southeastern Connecticut Organization for Racial Equity, Inc. that he claimed had previously been called Black Lives Matter of East Lyme and wrote that they “do not hold American values” and called them a “communist organization.”
In another request, he wrote, “The East Lyme Board of Education (BOE) is not the CIA. Yet I have learned that the BOE acts as if it thinks it is the CIA.”
The commission found that in multiple requests, Godbout wrote a “lengthy preamble” and did not identify the actual records he was requesting until several pages into the request.
They further found that in several requests Godbout used tactics such as burying requests within his interpretation of law or demanding “specific and detailed reasoning for any exemption claimed regarding the requested records” to not only overwhelm the town but to “frustrate their efforts to not only reply to [Godbout’s] requests but also to perform their other functions.”
In one request, Godbout told the police department that “claims of exemption must cover all of the authorities for accessing records” and that it would be “deemed insufficient for records available to FOIA and common law to simply claim an exemption under FOIA without making a showing that the record is also exempt under common law.” The commission found that by “demanding specific and detailed reasoning for claims of exemption,” Godbout sought to make it more difficult to comply with his requests.
The commission concluded that “a significant number” of Godbout’s requests were not made in good faith with the goal of accessing public records but were used “as a platform by which he could air his grievances against [the town] as well as castigate, and in some instances, retaliate against public officials and employees.”
They further found that Godbout “utilizes the pretense of a records request and follow up correspondence to ensnare [town officials] in protracted discussions and make them a captive audience to his grievances, diatribes and (often erroneous) legal theories” and that town employees spent a “significant amount of time” in good faith efforts to “decipher” Godbout’s messages, consult with legal counsel, and respond. This pattern, according to the FOIC, met the statutory definition of a vexatious requester.
FOIC Hearings
Additionally, the commission found Godbout’s conduct during two hearings held on East Lyme’s petition was intended to “flood the Hearing Officer, the Commission, and the Petitoners, with unfounded accusations and meritless legal arguments in an effort to stall out the hearings.”
On April 21, 2025, shortly before two hearings were held in the case, Godbout filed a counterclaim with the commission, which claimed Michael Macek, East Lyme’s acting chief of police, of “criminally impersonating” the town’s chief of police and sought the assessment of civil penalties totaling tens of thousands of dollars against Macek and half a dozen other town officials. It also contained “a host of other allegations” against town officials, including perjury, larceny, and “a conspiracy to deprive [Godbout] of his constitutional rights.” The FOIC’s rules don’t allow for the filing of counterclaims.
Prior to an initial hearing in the case, Godbout also brought motions to have the case dismissed, arguing in part that the PRVR law’s vagueness was unconstitutional, and to have FOIC commissioner Jonathan Einhorn, who served as the hearing officer, disqualified from ruling on the case, arguing he was prejudiced against “citizens exercising rights to obtain public records.” Godbout “insisted” that Einhorn rule on them prior to the first hearing.
Godbout filed five additional motions after a second hearing was held. Despite refusing to take an oath and testify during the hearings, Godbout also submitted filings after the second hearing, including a motion to reconvene a hearing and compel East Lyme employees to be subpoenaed to provide testimony. All of Godbout’s motions, totaling over 20, were denied, and the commission found that they were “designed to overwhelm the Commission in order to prevent the timely adjudication of this matter.” They further found that Godbout’s motions “did, in fact, significantly impede the Commission’s ability to process this matter in a timelier fashion.”
The FOIC also found Godbout used his opportunity to cross-examine witnesses “as an opportunity to badger witnesses” and “go on irrelevant tangents,” resulting in Einhorn needing to “continuously redirect [Godbout] back to the relevant line of questioning.”
“It is found that the conduct displayed by [Godbout] during the two hearings in this matter is consistent with his conducts towards [the town’ during the time relevant to the Petition, in that he sought to use the Commission’s proceedings as another opportunity to harass public employees and officials, air his grievances of both [the town] and the Commission, and obstruct public agencies that he felt had wrong him.” the commisison’s decision states.
Additionally, while East Lyme’s PRVR was before the commission, Godbout filed five complaints against the town agencies involved in it, as well as 21 complaints against the town, other public agencies, and the FOIC. The FOIC’s executive director recommended complaints not be scheduled in any of them, but according to the FOIC’s decision, Godbout would frequently withdraw the complaints shortly before the full FOIC was due to consider the recommendation. The FOIC found this was designed to “avoid having an official Commission decision indicating his complaints constitute an abuse of the Commission’s administrative process” and to “maximize the work and effort required of various public agencies and the Commission to process his requests and complaints.” This pattern, they found, “strongly indicates” the complaints were not made in good faith.
They also noted two additional superior court cases Godbout had filed in March and July 2024 in an “attempt to forego the administrative process entirely” and that doing so showed a clear disregard for FOIA, the FOIC, and its process.
The FOIC’s Conclusion
The FOIC found not only that Godbout had used FOIA “as a facade to further his ulterior motives” and “made a mockery of the public’s right to access records” but that he “showed no indication of deviating from his pattern of conduct. They also noted that if Godbout appealed the decision to the courts, the one-year period during which the town did not have to answer Godbout’s requests would be stayed until the case was concluded.
They therefore ordered that the East Lyme town offices named in the PRVR do not need to respond to Godbout’s record requests for one year. In the event Godbout does file more requests during that period, the FOIC stated that the town could immediately file another PRVR request and the commission would consider the entire record, including the first case against Godbout, to determine whether additional relief was warranted.
At a July 23 FOIC meeting at which the commission voted to adopt Einhorn’s decision, FOIC executive Colleen Murphy stated Godbout had filed 12 motions prior to the meeting and asked the commission to review them before discussing the decision. Godbout objected and asked all 9 members of the commission to recuse themselves from a vote on the PRVR, saying they had not reviewed all the evidence in the case.
Many of those motions were identical to motions previously filed by Godbout, including to delay consideration of the matter and to dismiss Einhorn. Godbout claimed the commission was attempting to deny him legal representation, a motion made prior to the July 23 meeting and previously during the adjudication of the complaint.
Einhorn addressed this during the meeting, noting Godbout did not ask for counsel until during the second hearing. He stated that had Godbout mentioned that during the first hearing, something could have been done, and that the request came too late. Einhorn further stated that he had told Godbout he could have obtained counsel for the July 23 hearing, but he chose not to.
Commissioners agreed the claims Godbout was making had been previously addressed by the commission and there was no point in going over them again.
Given the opportunity to speak in response to Murphy’s recommendations to deny his motions, Godbout mostly objected to a denial by Einhorn during the hearing to introduce recordings he had taken during evidence, arguing that a federal law overruled Connecticut’s rule that recordings be authorized by two-parties and claiming phone calls he received from commission members were ‘spoofed.’
The commission voted unanimously to deny Godbout’s motions.
On the PRVR ruling, Godbout claimed a motion he made to dismiss the case referenced in the ruling had not been addressed. He also claimed the PRVR law was not an actual law that had been passed in a regular session by the General Assembly, in part because there was no quorum at the time it was passed and because they had not convened in keeping with the state constitution’s requirements.
Murphy found the motion to dismiss had been denied and was referenced in the report.
Godbout also argued that his requests were not meant to harass, but were “normal, routine records requests” that public agencies see every day.
He claimed the first PRVR case against him was based on perjured testimony, and this was why the commission did not want to review his arguments.
The FOIC voted unanimously to adopt the hearing officer’s report, finding it to be meticulous and well-researched.
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