Adkisson v. Paxton

459 S.W.3d 761, 43 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1560, 2015 Tex. App. LEXIS 2167, 2015 WL 1030295
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMarch 6, 2015
DocketNO. 03-12-00535-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 459 S.W.3d 761 (Adkisson v. Paxton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Adkisson v. Paxton, 459 S.W.3d 761, 43 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1560, 2015 Tex. App. LEXIS 2167, 2015 WL 1030295 (Tex. Ct. App. 2015).

Opinion

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING OPINION

David Puryear, Justice

We withdraw the opinion and judgment dated June 13, 2014, and substitute the following opinion and judgment in then-place. We deny appellant’s motion for rehearing.

Tommy Adkisson appeals, both individually and on Bexar County’s behalf in his official capacity as Bexar County Commissioner Precinct 4, from the trial court’s summary judgment declaring that he must disclose certain records requested under the Texas Public Information Act (PIA). See generally Tex. Gov’t Code §§ 552.001- ' .353. Commissioner Adkisson contends that the requested information is not public information. The requestor, appellee Hearst Newspapers, LLC, sought correspondence from Commissioner Adkisson’s personal e-mail accounts related to his official capacity as a county commissioner or as chairman of the San Antonio-Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization, or both.

The Commissioner sued the Attorney General for declaratory relief from the Attorney General’s letter rulings that the information is public and must be released.1 See id. § 552.324 (establishing that governmental body seeking to withhold information from a requestor may only file suit seeking declaratory relief from compliance with decision by attorney general). Hearst intervened in the lawsuit, seeking a writ of mandamus under the PIA. See id. §§ 552.321 (permitting requestor to sue for writ of mandamus compelling governmental body to make information available to public), .325 (providing that requestor is entitled to intervene in suit filed by governmental body seeking declaratory relief allowing it to withhold information). Hearst also sought declaratory relief and attorneys’ fees under both the PIA and the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act. See id. §§ 552.3215 (permitting suit for declaratory judgment or injunctive relief against governmental body that is withholding information), .323 (establishing circumstances under which courts may or shall award attorneys’ fees); Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 37.003 (establishing power of courts to declare rights, status, and other legal relations), .009 (allowing court to award “equitable and just” attorneys’ fees). The Commissioner, the Attorney General, and Hearst each moved for summary judgment and sought attorneys’ fees.

The trial court denied the Commissioner’s motion and granted the Attorney General’s and Hearst’s motions and awarded attorneys’ fees to the Attorney General and to Hearst. We will affirm the judgment because we conclude that information in the Commissioner’s official-capacity e[765]*765mails is necessarily connected with the transaction of the County’s official business and the County owns the information under the Local Government Code; thus, the requested information satisfies the PIA’s definition of “public information.” In addition, we conclude that the trial court acted within its discretion by awarding attorneys’ fees to the Attorney General and Hearst. However, we will modify the trial court’s judgment to clarify that only Bexar County, the governmental entity on behalf of which the Commissioner filed suit in his official capacity and against which Hearst filed its suit, is liable for the attorneys’ fees awarded under the PIA to the Attorney General and Hearst.

BACKGROUND

Hearst is the publisher of the San Antonio Express-News. An Express-News reporter requested information under the PIA from the Commissioner by submitting an open-records request to the County. The reporter requested copies of certain email correspondence “related to [the Commissioner’s] official capacity as a county commissioner and/or chairman of the [Metropolitan Planning Organization].” Although the request sought correspondence from both the Commissioner’s personal email accounts and his County e-mail account, it explicitly stated that the Express-News sought only “relevant documents from Commissioner Adkisson’s official capacity, not personal correspondence.”

Soon after Hearst requested documents from Bexar County, the Metropolitan Planning Organization received a request from a different requestor seeking all correspondence between the Commissioner, other named County Commissioners, and certain county employees on both work and home communication devices when used in official capacity. The Metropolitan Planning Organization, in turn, requested the information from Bexar County. The San Antonio-Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization is an organization charged with developing and maintaining a comprehensive regional transportation planning process.2 Its Transportation Policy Board provides transportation policy and planning guidance. A number of regional elected and appointed officials are on the Board. At the time of the PIA requests, the Commissioner served on the Board as one of the Bexar County representatives and was the Board Chair.

Bexar County sought letter rulings from the Attorney General for both requests.3 See Tex. Gov’t Code § 552.301 (requiring governmental body that receives written request for information that it wishes to withhold from public disclosure to ask for attorney general decision). The County contended that any correspondence in the Commissioner’s personal e-mail accounts, regardless of its content, is not public information as defined by the PIA because it was not either collected, assembled, or maintained by the governmental body or prepared on behalf of the governmental body and the governmental body did not have a right of access to the correspondence. The County asserted that it was not submitting a representative sample of any requested correspondence because to do so would require the County to search a computer at the Commissioner’s private residence to compile the requested correspondence, which would infringe upon the [766]*766Commissioner’s legitimate expectation of privacy and his constitutional rights not to be subject to a search warrant without probable cause: The County’s two requests for rulings from the Attorney General were substantively the same, except that in the second request the County also asserted that the information might be excepted from disclosure under Sections 552.101 (based on case law related to common-law privacy), 552.109, 552.111, and 552.137 of the PIA. See id. §§ 552.101 (excepting from disclosure information considered to be confidential by law, including judicial decision), .109 (excepting from disclosure elected official’s private correspondence or communications related to matters which would constitute invasion of privacy if disclosed), .111 (excepting from disclosure interagency or intra-agen-cy correspondence that would not be available by law to party in litigation with agency), .137 (excepting from disclosure email address of member of public that is provided for purpose of communicating electronically with governmental body).

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Related

City of Carrollton v. Paxton
490 S.W.3d 187 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 2016)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
459 S.W.3d 761, 43 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1560, 2015 Tex. App. LEXIS 2167, 2015 WL 1030295, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/adkisson-v-paxton-texapp-2015.