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A Dane County circuit judge recently ruled that UW-Madison broke the state’s public records and open meetings laws — violations that may cost the university more than $40,000.

UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health failed to turn over records relating to how a committee awarded millions of dollars from an endowment for public health projects, according to the ruling. The committee also failed to properly inform the public why it went behind closed doors in a 2016 meeting.

The judge also noted that “in this grant cycle alone” the committee funded two projects that were not as highly rated as others, and those two projects were associated with committee members.

The June 13 court order requires UW-Madison to pay back the plaintiff’s legal fees or to appeal. University officials said they had not received information on the fees and are still considering whether to appeal.

An attorney for the plaintiff, Christa Westerberg, said legal fees in the more than two years spent litigating the suit will be “north of $40,000.”

Westerberg, of the Madison law firm Pines Bach and co-vice president of the state’s Freedom of Information Council, said UW-Madison “aggressively litigated” the lawsuit in a way she had not seen before.