Background Information Services, Inc. v. Office of the State Court Administrator

980 P.2d 991, 1998 Colo. J. C.A.R. 6125, 1998 Colo. App. LEXIS 314, 1998 WL 856912
CourtColorado Court of Appeals
DecidedDecember 10, 1998
DocketNo. 97CA1611
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 980 P.2d 991 (Background Information Services, Inc. v. Office of the State Court Administrator) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Colorado Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Background Information Services, Inc. v. Office of the State Court Administrator, 980 P.2d 991, 1998 Colo. J. C.A.R. 6125, 1998 Colo. App. LEXIS 314, 1998 WL 856912 (Colo. Ct. App. 1998).

Opinion

Opinion by Judge

ROTHENBERG.

Defendant, Office of the State Court Administrator (SCA), appeals the trial court’s order requiring it to extract non-confidential information from existing court records which contain both confidential and non-confidential information, pursuant to the Open Records Act, § 24-72-201, et seq., C.R.S. 1998, and to provide that information to the plaintiff, Background Information Services, Inc. (BIS). We affirm.

SCA maintains a computer database containing all of the civil and criminal court proceedings for the State of Colorado. This database includes public and nonpublic information as defined in the Open Records Act.

BIS, a company which performs background searches on individuals, contracted with SCA to receive magnetic tapes containing only public information from the database. In order to extract the information, computer programs were designed and created which would extract only the public information from SCA’s different computer databases. Each time SCA converted to a new computer system or when the General Assembly made certain public information nonpublic, modifications to the programs were made or new programs were created. BIS has always paid the costs of creating these programs and the costs generated by the extraction of the public information.

[993]*993BIS does not seek the actual pleadings and papers filed in court, but only computer data regarding the type of case, description of the case, parties to the case, and other court information. Although SCA had provided this service to BIS for several years, after conversion to a new computer system, SCA stopped delivering the information to BIS. The reasons given by SCA included its concerns regarding invasion of privacy and its claim that it had no duty to extract the public information under the Open Records Act. This action by BIS and the order challenged in this appeal followed.

I.

SCA contends the trial court erred in ordering disclosure of the information. According to SCA, the information would potentially violate the privacy interests of the persons whose names are contained in the records, and SCA also would be disclosing information in court records which are later sealed. We are not persuaded.

A court’s primary task in construing a statute is to give effect to the intent of the General Assembly. Courts should interpret statutory terms in accordance with their plain and ordinary meaning. Thurman v. Tafoya, 895 P.2d 1050 (Colo.1995).

Statutes must be construed as a whole, and when interpreting a statute, a court must give consistent, harmonious, and sensible effect to all of its parts. A construction that leads to an absurd result will not be followed. City of Grand Junction v. Sisneros, 957 P.2d 1026 (Colo.1998).

The General Assembly has declared in the Open Records Act that, with certain specified exceptions, it is “the public policy of this state that all public records shall be open for inspection by any person at reasonable times_” Section 24-72-201, C.R.S.1998. Denver Publishing Co. v. Dreyfus, 184 Colo. 288, 520 P.2d 104 (1974). Exceptions to the Act should be narrowly construed. Freedom Newspapers, Inc. v. Tollefson, 961 P.2d 1150 (Colo.App.1998).

Any member of the public is entitled to review all public records unless there exists a legitimate reason for non-disclosure. There is no requirement that the party seeking access demonstrate a special interest in the records requested. Denver Publishing Co. v. Dreyfus, supra. See C.R.C.P. 121 § 1-5.2 (presuming all court records are to be open and placing burden on party seeking to limit access to demonstrate that harm to privacy outweighs public interest); Anderson v. Home Insurance Co., 924 P.2d 1123 (Colo.App.1996).

Here, the trial court applied the proper standard and determined, with record support, that there was no harm to privacy interests outweighing the public interest in disclosure and that SCA’s assertions of intrusion upon privacy interests did not overcome the strong presumption favoring access to court records. It further found that SCA’s concern about the relatively few court records that initially were open, but were later sealed, did not overcome the presumption because BIS had agreed to delete any such records from its database.

Accordingly, we reject SCA’s contention that the trial court erred in ordering disclosure to BIS of the public portions of the records.

II.

SCA next contends the trial court erred in ruling that it had a duty to redact the nonpublic information and, in effect, to create a new public record in order to disclose the public information to BIS. We disagree.

SCA’s database is a compilation of civil and criminal records containing both exempt and nonexempt information and does not constitute a separate public record. BIS only requested that SCA provide the public information in its database which ordinarily would be disclosed under the Open Records Act.

SCA resisted the request, maintaining that to provide BIS with the public or nonexempt information would require it to manipulate or extract the public data in order to prevent disclosure of non-public data. Relying on Sargent School District No. RE-33J v. Western Services, Inc., 751 P.2d 56 (Colo.1988), SCA asserts that the Act imposes no such duty upon it.

[994]*994However, in Sargent School District No. RE-33J v. Western Services, Inc., supra, the supreme court concluded that the case came within a specific and unambiguous exception in the Open Records Act which limited the disclosure of individual scholastic records. See § 24-72-204(3)(a)(I), C.R.S.1998. Because the records requested there contained only exempt information and required manipulation and alteration of the records to make the data nonexempt, the supreme court held there was no implied duty on the part of the custodian to alter confidential information to make it disclosable under the Open Records Act.

Here, in contrast, no such limiting statutory exception applies and BIS seeks only public information to which it is entitled. However, because both public and nonpublic information have been combined in one database, the court records contain both exempt and nonexempt information. Access to the public information requires only the redaction or deletion of nonexempt data.

If we were to accept SCA’s argument that no implied duty exists to make such public information available, public agencies could limit access to public information by combining it with nonpublic information. This would contravene the stated purpose of the Act. The supreme court in Sargent acknowledged this potential for abuse when it stated that: “[A]ny record which an agency is required by law to keep could be rendered inaccessible to public scrutiny by the inclusion of confidential material.” Sargent School District No. RE-33J v.

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Related

Bodelson v. Denver Publishing Co.
5 P.3d 373 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 2000)
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980 P.2d 991 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 1999)

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980 P.2d 991, 1998 Colo. J. C.A.R. 6125, 1998 Colo. App. LEXIS 314, 1998 WL 856912, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/background-information-services-inc-v-office-of-the-state-court-coloctapp-1998.