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Gun maker Smith & Wesson is suing the state Attorney General’s Office over what it says are exorbitant fees for firearms-related public records. 

The AG’s office sought as much as $27,000 for records requested by the gun maker and said it would take hundreds of hours for lawyers to comply with the request, according to a civil lawsuit filed Monday. The lawsuit says Smith & Wesson filed similar registration requests in other states but did not face the same barriers to access.

“It appears to the client and to us that the amount of time that the State of Hawaii is seeking, and therefore the amount of fees, is an attempt to thwart the public records request ,” attorney Jeff Portnoy, representing Smith & Wesson, said.

In 2020, third-party agency Cogency Global filed three records requests on behalf of Smith & Wesson. The first request asked for communications between the department and the Gun Liability Counsel Task Force , a coalition of law firms that seek to prevent gun violence.

The company also requested several requests for proposals that the AG’s office issued related to firearms issues. The third request was for a log of all records requests made to the AG’s office.

The AG’s office denied some of those records, saying their release would interfere with lawful government operations, according to the lawsuit. The AG’s office demanded almost $23,000 for the records that could be released.

The office said it took hundreds of hours to review and separate those records. For the RFP request alone, Smith & Wesson charged $2.50 for every 15 minutes spent searching for records and $5 for every 15 minutes spent reviewing those documents.

The AG’s office requested half the total, about $12,000, before the records were released.

In July 2021, the weapons company issued a second, narrower request to cut costs. Instead, the AG’s office set a higher estimate of $27,000 for searching the records and reviewing them.

Portnoy said the company wants the state to provide realistic estimates of the actual amount of time it will take the AG’s office to complete the filing request.

“In Smith & Wesson’s view, the state is trying to prevent the production of (documents),” said attorney Jeff Portnoy, who represents Smith & Wesson, said.

The gun maker says in the lawsuit that it believes the AG’s refusal to release the records was politically motivated. Hawaii has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, and companies like Smith & Wesson have challenged those laws in other states in the past.

In December, Smith & Wesson joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn a New York law allowing victims of gun violence to sue the gun industry. The company is also facing an investigation by the state of New Jersey seeking internal documents .

Portnoy said he was not authorized to say what led the company to believe the denials of the document request were politically motivated. He said he was not told exactly why the company needed the documents.

The AG’s office had not yet received the lawsuit as of Tuesday. A department spokesman said the department will respond to the complaint as soon as it happens.

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