Matter of Hendrix v. Monroe County Dept. of Communication

2017 NY Slip Op 5001, 151 A.D.3d 1857, 54 N.Y.S.3d 350

• Court: Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
• Decided: June 16, 2017
• Docket: 810 CA 15-00988
• Status: Published

Opinion

Appeal from a judgment (denominated order) of the Supreme Court, Monroe County (Ann Marie Taddeo, J.), entered April 20, 2015 in a CPLR article 78 proceeding. The judgment denied the petition.

It is hereby ordered that the judgment so appealed from is unanimously affirmed without costs.

Memorandum: Petitioner appeals from a judgment that denied his CPLR article 78 petition seeking to compel respondent to produce certain documents pursuant to the Freedom of Information Law ([FOIL] Public Officers Law art 6) and CPL 190.25 (4). We affirm. Petitioner was not entitled to the requested grand jury minutes because “the minutes are court records and [are] exempt from the ambit of FOIL” (Matter of Bridgewater v Johnson, 44 AD3d 549, 550 [2007]; see Matter of Hall v Bongiorno, 305 AD2d 508, 509 [2003]). With respect to petitioner’s application pursuant to GPL 190.25 (4), we conclude that Supreme Court properly determined that petitioner failed to provide a compelling and particularized need for the minutes (see Matter of Mullgrav v Santucci, 195 AD2d 786, 786-787 [1993]; Matter of Gibson v Grady, 192 AD2d 657, 657 [1993]).

Present — Whalen, P.J., Smith, Carni, Curran and Scudder, JJ.