Opinion
CV 03 0518871S
November 14, 2003
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
This is an administrative appeal from a decision of the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) brought pursuant to General Statutes §§ 1-206(d) and 4-183(b). The plaintiff in this action, Clerk, G.A. #7, Connecticut Superior Court, State of Connecticut, Judicial Branch (Plaintiff), seeks a review of the decision of the FOIC in its contested case docket number FIC 2002-076, Attorney Russell Collins, LLC v. State of Connecticut, Judicial Branch et al., based upon the assignments of error in the plaintiff's appeal dated December 27, 2002.
By letter dated January 28, 2002, attorney Russell Collins (Collins) requested that the Meriden Superior Court clerk's office allow him to inspect the "Pending book" and "Daybooks," as well as any other central ledgers, reports, etc., for the month of January 2002, that would allow him to identify cases currently pending in the G.A. courthouse that were in "pre-arraignment" status. By letter dated February 5, 2002, Collins requested access to, or copies of, the Daybook, and access to copies of information about pending criminal cases where the defendant was charged with committing an offense between January 15 and February 6, 2002. Collins sought the defendant's name, address, date of birth, case docket number, date of next court hearing, the purpose of the next court hearing, whether the defendant was represented by counsel and whether the defendant was incarcerated. In each of his letters, Collins noted that he did not represent the defendants in any of the cases, nor was he the defendant in any such cases. Collins further stated that his request did not include records or information sealed by judicial order or state statute. Collins' requests were denied. Collins sought relief from the clerk's denial by petitioning the FOIC. The FOIC held a hearing on Collins' complaint.
The FOIC found that the information sought by Collins was recorded in the criminal motor vehicle system (CRMVS), and further found that such records have both administrative and adjudicative functions. The FOIC concluded that such records are administrative for purposes of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), General Statutes § 1-200 et seq., and ordered the records disclosed.
The FOIC, at its November 13, 2002 meeting concluded
that, as information technology improves, more records can be provided by the highly modern information systems of the respondent Judicial Branch, without interfering with the performance of judicial functions. Specifically, pending case information, and not just conviction data, can be provided from computerized court records, without interfering with the performance of judicial functions. Accordingly, and in keeping with the extremely professional practices of the respondent Judicial Branch, the CRMVS records that have both administrative and adjudicative functions are concluded to be, legally, `administrative' records.
(Final Decision dated November 13, 2002, Return of Record, Item 25, p. 266.)
General Statutes § 1-210(a) (formerly § 1-19(a)), dealing with access to public records, provides in pertinent part: "Except as otherwise provided by any federal law or state statute, all records maintained or kept on file by any public agency . . . shall be public records . . ." General Statutes § 1-200(1)(A) defines public agency to include: "any judicial office, official, or body or committee thereof but only with respect to its or their administrative functions . . ." The FOIC, in its memorandum of law dated August 25, 2003 at page 18 recited: "Of course, all of these administrative functions relate in some way to the court's central adjudicative function. Without clerks, the court could not efficiently schedule cases to be heard, or keep records, or perform a myriad of other administrative tasks including ordering supplies and managing support staff. Every administrative function ultimately relates to the court's primary adjudicative function . . ." However, the FOIC argues that simply because administrative matters have some adjudicative component to it does not mean that the information can be excluded from the ambit of § 1-200(1).
The plaintiff's position is that § 1-200(1)(A), which defines agency to include judicial, statutorily restricts the disclosure of judicial records to matters that are solely administrative, and therefore, records that are partly administrative and partly adjudicative cannot be disclosed under § 1-210(a).
The issue then is whether judicial branch records that contain a blend of administrative and adjudicative functions are required to be disclosed under the FOIA and in particular § 1-210(a).
"Administrative functions" have been described in Rules Committee of the Superior Court v. FOIC, 192 Conn. 234, 242-43, 472 A.2d 9 (1984) as "matters relating to the management of the internal institutional machinery of the court system." The issue in the Rules Committee case was whether the Rules Committee of the Superior Court performs administrative functions within the meaning of and subject to the provisions of the FOIA. In considering the judicial rule-making powers of the Superior Court, the court in Rules Committee considered three classes of rule making: substantive rules, procedural rules and administrative rules. Id., 242. The Rules Committee court noted: "It is the distinction between procedural and administrative rules that is at issue in this case. That distinction turns upon whether we are dealing with matters involved in the adjudication of cases, which are procedural, or with matters involved in the internal organization of large and complex systems of courts, which are administrative." Id.
In Connecticut Bar Examining Committee v. FOIC 209 Conn. 204, 550 A.2d 633 (1988), the court considered the bar examining committee, when passing upon the qualifications of candidates for admission to the Connecticut bar, to be acting as an arm of the judiciary in a role that is in part a performance of judicial functions and in part administrative. Id., 206. Because the court in Connecticut Bar Examining Committee could not make a determination of what functions were solely administrative, and therefore, could be made available pursuant to § 1-210(a), the court remanded the case back to the trial court to determine: "(1) which portions of the information the FOIC has ordered to be disclosed concern only the performance of the committee's administrative functions, and (2) whether public access to the pertinent records may interfere with the performance of the committee's judicial functions." Id. It is interesting to note that, although the Connecticut Bar Examining Committee court remanded that case back to the trial judge to determine whether public access may interfere with the judicial performance, this same court later in its decision stated: "To the extent that public access to any of the records ordered by the FOIC to be disclosed may reasonably be considered by the committee to impede significantly its performance of that function, the committee would be justified in refusing such disclosure." Connecticut Bar Examining Committee, supra, 209 Conn. 211, citing Adams v. Rubinow, 157 Conn. 150, 160-61, 251 A.2d 49 (1968). We interpret this to mean that even if the information requested is administrative in nature, the judicial branch is justified in refusing the disclosure if doing so would significantly impede the performance of judicial functions.
We return to the language of General Statutes § 1-200(1)(A) which includes judicial within the definition of agency, for the purpose of disclosure, but limits the disclosure by judicial "only" with respect to administrative functions. To expand the term "only" to apply to the disclosure of public records that have both judicial and administrative functions would require us to rewrite this statute. This, we cannot do. Howard v. Commissioner of Correction, 230 Conn. 17, 22, 644 A.2d 874 (1994). Where the legislature restricted the disclosure of judicial records to administrative records only, the FOIC is not empowered by this statute, where it finds that the records have a mix of both judicial and administrative functions, to disregard the judicial function aspect and determine the function to be "only" administrative.
We note that in the FOIC's finding of fact, ¶ 10, it was found: "that, in order to redact newly exempt information concerning juveniles, sealed records, and erased records from the `Pending Book' and the `Daybooks,' a time-consuming and burdensome process of checking each file in the CRMVS must be performed. This is the process that the assistant clerk at G.A. #7 performed with reference to the complainant's request, a process which required four or five hours in order to check only two relevant days of the `Daybooks.' The `Pending Book' and particularly the `Daybooks,' therefore, are more traditional information records, subject to the familiar limitation of not being current or `real time.'" (Final Decision dated November 13, 2000, Return of Record, Item 25, p. 265.)
The FOIC, recognizing the time-consuming process of complying with attorney Collins' request, concluded that, "as information technology improves, more records can be provided by the highly modern information system of the respondent Judicial Branch without interfering with the performance of judicial functions." (Report of Hearing Officer dated September 19, 2002, ¶ 13, Return of Record, Item 19, p. 210.) Based on this finding of the hearing officer, the FOIC ordered the judicial branch to "periodically allow the complainant to inspect the requested records of the CRMVS." (Return of Record, Item 25, p. 266.) This order is foreign to the language of § 1-210(1)(A) which restricts disclosure only to administrative matters because the order does not allow the judicial branch to screen what records deal with a judicial function and which deal with administrative functions.
We find that the FOIC has extended its reach beyond that contemplated by the legislature as expressed in § 1-210(1)(A).
Accordingly, we sustain the plaintiff's appeal without costs to either party.
ARNOLD W. ARONSON JUDGE TRIAL REFEREE.