The City Pages newspaper filed suit Thursday to get access to records showing the time and expenses for the lawyers who worked on the tobacco litigation for Minnesota.

The suit, filed in Ramsey County District Court, seeks access to time records and related documents that the lawyers submitted to the state. It asks the court to order state officials to retrieve the records from the Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Ciresi law firm and make them public under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch responded earlier to the newspaper's request for the records by saying they are no longer in state officials' possession and aren't public because the firm's legal fees were paid by the tobacco companies and not the state. The newspaper's suit contends that the records are public regardless of how the fees were paid and that state officials should be required to retrieve them.

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