Chicago Sent the Emails to a Lawyer. That Did Not Make Them Privileged.
Contractor correspondence did not become attorney-client communication simply because it was later forwarded for legal advice.
Sending an existing record to a government lawyer does not rewrite how that record was created. Chicago’s Department of Law learned that distinction in Public Access Opinion 26-010.
Chicago Sun-Times reporter Tim Novak requested correspondence involving former city chief operating officer Paul Goodrich and contractor Robert Blackwell Jr. and his companies. The April 20,2026, request concerned contracts, work agreements and invoices during a specified 2021–2023 period.
The emails existed before the legal consultation
After messages about searching and reviewing records, the department denied the request on May 20 under FOIA’s attorney-communications exemption. Novak sought PAC review the next day.
The PAC asked for the records and an explanation on June 18 and sent a second request on July 23. The city’s position was that the records had subsequently been sent to a city attorney to obtain legal advice.
The opinion found the records were communications between a city official and a third-party contractor. They did not originate as confidential exchanges within an attorney-client relationship for providing or seeking legal services. Forwarding them later did not transform the underlying correspondence into privileged communications.
There was a public story behind the request
A July 2 Sun-Times report by Novak and Robert Herguth examined Goodrich’s relationship with Blackwell in the context of city hiring and contracting scrutiny. That reporting included Goodrich’s denial of a quid pro quo. It provides context for the public interest in the correspondence, rather than proof of wrongdoing established by this PAC opinion.
The Attorney General ordered the withheld records released without redactions. The legal conclusion concerns the claimed privilege over those records; it is not a ruling on the merits of a contracting scandal.
The principle is straightforward and consequential: a legal department cannot make preexisting contractor correspondence disappear from public view merely by putting it in a lawyer’s hands.
Read the record
Open or download the official binding opinion 26-010 (PDF). The opinion contains the complaint history, the agency’s response, the legal analysis and the ordered remedy.
Chicago Sun-Times: reporting on Goodrich, Blackwell and the contracting scrutiny
Reporting is based on the cited opinion and linked coverage. A direction to disclose records or repeat a vote is not proof that the agency later complied. Cover: AI-generated editorial illustration; rooms, papers and objects are symbolic. “PAC vs.” is a series label, not a court-case caption.
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