North Dakota’s Stenehjem Says Workers’ Comp Agency within the Law

Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem says North Dakota’s workers’ compensation agency did not violate the state’s open records law when it denied a legal record to an agency critic.

Stenehjem wrote in a legal opinion that the record was a privileged “‘attorney work product.”

Chad Nodland is a Bismarck attorney and critic of the Workforce Safety and Insurance agency. He sought a copies of memos written by the agency’s legal staff about severance pay for former WSI director Brent Edison.

Nodland operates a Web site called northdecoder.com, which often features public records relating to WSI. He has requested a number of legal opinions from Stenehjem in records disputes with Workforce Safety