Nat'l Lawyers Guild v. City of Hayward

238 Cal. Rptr. 3d 505, 27 Cal. App. 5th 937
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal, 5th District
DecidedSeptember 28, 2018
DocketA149328
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 238 Cal. Rptr. 3d 505 (Nat'l Lawyers Guild v. City of Hayward) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal, 5th District primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Nat'l Lawyers Guild v. City of Hayward, 238 Cal. Rptr. 3d 505, 27 Cal. App. 5th 937 (Cal. Ct. App. 2018).

Opinion

Jenkins, J.

*507This is an appeal from the trial court's decision to grant the petition for writ of mandate of the National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (Guild), and to issue a writ directing the City of Hayward and its Chief of Police Diane Urban (collectively, City) to refund the Guild for two payments made to cover certain of the City's costs in complying with the Guild's requests for production under the California Public Records Act ( Gov. Code, § 6250 et seq. ) (CPRA).1 Concluding the trial court misinterpreted the applicable provision of the CPRA-section 6253.9, subdivision (b)-we reverse.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The relevant facts are not in dispute. The Guild is a not-for-profit organization seeking to unite lawyers and law students with the aim to promote justice in the administration of law, civil rights and racial equality. On January 27, 2015, the Guild served on the City requests for 11 categories of public records (paper and electronic) relating to a demonstration held in Berkeley in December 2014 to protest recent incidents of police violence toward private citizens, at which the Hayward Police Department (Department) provided security.

In response to these requests, the City provided the Guild with copies of well over 200 public records. Among the hundreds of such records, the City produced over six hours of police body camera videos from the Berkeley demonstration, which had been redacted to exclude material exempt from disclosure under the CPRA on privacy or security grounds.2 In preparing for this production, City employees, including IT manager Nathaniel Roush and the Department's records administrator, Adam Perez, spent approximately 170 hours identifying, compiling, reviewing and redacting exempt portions from these videos, which were among thousands of hours of police videos stored on the Internet and accessible only by certain personnel through a password-protected external website.3 According to evidence submitted by the City, Roush, in particular, performed *50845 database searches that yielded 141 videos with, collectively, about 90 hours of footage. Then, after initially reviewing the videos for accuracy, Roush downloaded the videos from the cloud and copied them. However, in order to review these videos for exempt material and to make necessary redactions, Perez required the use of specialized third party software with audio/video editing capabilities. For this task, which the City had not previously undertaken, Perez researched several different software programs before selecting Windows Movie Maker as the most suitable program for performing these functions.

Realizing the volume of work required to produce the body camera videos, the City conversed with the Guild with the goal of narrowing its requests. In March 2015, the Guild agreed "for now" to accept approximately six hours of video taken at the Berkeley demonstration.

On May 18, 2015, after discussions with the Guild regarding the City's costs in responding to the requests for body camera videos, the City sent the Guild an invoice for $2,939.58 seeking reimbursement for certain costs incurred by its employees in copying the videos for production (including the "tedious" task of redacting them).4 The City reached this invoice total by determining Roush spent 4.9 hours of his time preparing the videos for production (excluding his work burning the videos onto DVD's and then preserving the DVD's as potential evidence). It determined Perez, in turn, spent 35.3 hours engaged in tasks including editing the videos with the Windows Movie Maker software (but excluding his time collecting and compiling the videos), reviewing over 90 hours of videos, and selecting, by trial and error, the Windows Movie Maker software program. The City also agreed to make the redacted videos available for viewing free of charge.

The Guild thereafter paid this invoice under protest, and received copies of roughly 232 minutes of police body camera videos, consisting of seven separate videos in MP4 format. Shortly thereafter, the Guild made a request for a second set of videos encompassing recordings from 24 named officers, plus other unnamed officers, on duty at the Berkeley demonstration during three specific time periods. The City promptly complied with this request, permitting the Guild to view the redacted videos free of charge and offering to produce copies of these videos for a charge of $308.89 to cover certain of its production costs.

Rather than pay this amount, the Guild brought this action in the form of a Verified Petition for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief and Writ of Mandate (petition), seeking relief in the form of a refund for its payment of $2,939.58 for the first set of videos and release of the second set of videos for "[no] more than the direct costs of production." About two weeks later, however, the Guild paid the second invoice under protest and received the second set *509of videos (two videos in MP4 format totaling 65 minutes), while proceeding with this action.

On June 24, 2016, following issuance of a tentative order and contested hearing, the trial court ruled in favor of the Guild, concluding that, as a matter of law, section 6253, subdivision (b) and section 6253.9, subdivision (a)(2) do not permit the City to charge a CPRA requester for costs incurred in making a redacted version of an existing public record. After the Guild's request for reconsideration was denied, the City filed this timely appeal.

DISCUSSION

The only issue before us is one of statutory construction, which is subject to de novo review. ( Fredericks v. Superior Court (2015) 233 Cal.App.4th 209, 223, 182 Cal.Rptr.3d 526 ( Fredericks ).) Is the City entitled under section 6253.9, subdivision (b) (section 6253.9(b) ) to recoup from the Guild certain costs it incurred to edit and redact exempt material on otherwise disclosable police department body camera videos prior to the electronic public records' production?

To begin, we consider the statute, section 6253.9(b), in proper context. California citizens have a protected right of access to information concerning the conduct of the state's business and, in particular, the conduct of its police force. ( Cal. Const., art. I, § 3, subd. (b)(1) ["The people have the right of access to information concerning the conduct of the people's business, and, therefore, the meetings of public bodies and the writings of public officials and agencies shall be open to public scrutiny"]; § 6250 ; see Commission on Peace Officer Standards & Training v. Superior Court (2007) 42 Cal.4th 278, 297, 64 Cal.Rptr.3d 661,

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Nat. Lawyers Guild etc. v. City of Hayward
464 P.3d 594 (California Supreme Court, 2020)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
238 Cal. Rptr. 3d 505, 27 Cal. App. 5th 937, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/natl-lawyers-guild-v-city-of-hayward-calctapp5d-2018.