A Wisconsin appeals court has ruled in favor of a Juneau County newspaper that requested documents from the county but received paperwork with most information blacked out.
The Juneau County Star-Times had requested invoices of bills stemming from a legal investigation of a county employee. The case was handled by the county’s insurance company, which hired a law firm and paid the legal bills.
The newspaper asked to see the bills submitted by the law firm, and the firm responded with heavily redacted copies of the invoices. The Star-Times filed a complaint with the county alleging a violation of open-records laws.
The county argued that the open-records law didn’t even apply to the law firm because it was acting on behalf of the county’s insurer, not the county itself. It also argued that redacting the information was necessary to protect attorney-client privilege.
A lower court agreed with the arguments, but the appeals court overturned both decisions.
On the first point, the higher court said the open-records law should be interpreted with a presumption of complete public access. The justices said the billing records were relevant to the contract that the county had entered into with its insurance company, so they should be accessible to the public.
On the second point, the lower court had ruled that producing the billing notices would reveal the substance of lawyer-client communications, so it was permissible to redact them.
The appeals court disagreed. It said lawyers can only claim confidentiality privileges when disclosing the information would reveal the substance of the client’s confidential communications to the lawyer. The justices reviewed both redacted and unredacted versions of the 27 pages of invoices and decided that wasn’t the case.
“Much of the redacted information could not, under any stretch of the imagination, suggest anything of a privileged nature that involves confidential client communications,” the appeals court wrote.
As a result of the decision, the lower court must order the county to make unredacted copies of invoices available to the newspaper.
Messages left with the county and newspaper were not immediately returned.
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Online:
Appeals court decision: http://1.usa.gov/sTDX5P
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