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ASBURY PARK PRESS, PLAINTIFF-RESPONDENT, v. COUNTY OF MONMOUTH AND CAROL MELNICK, DEFENDANTS-APPELLANTS; JOHN PAFF, PLAINTIFF-RESPONDENT, v. MONMOUTH COUNTY AND JAMES GRAY, IN HIS CAPACITY AS THE MONMOUTH COUNTY CUSTODIAN OF RECORDS, DEFENDANTS-APPELLANTS

Supreme Court of New Jersey2010-01-25
201 N.J. 5986 A.2d 678

Summary

Holding. The Appellate Division's judgment is affirmed. Settlement agreements arising from public lawsuits against a government entity must be disclosed under OPRA, and the privacy clause does not permit a county to keep such settlements confidential when they result from public legal actions.

A New Jersey county sought to withhold a settlement agreement from public disclosure under the Open Public Records Act (OPRA), arguing that the privacy protections in OPRA's privacy clause justified keeping the settlement confidential. The settlement resulted from an employee's lawsuit against the county alleging sex discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, and a hostile work environment. The court rejected the county's reliance on a prior case involving bulk disclosure of personal records containing sensitive information like social security numbers and addresses. The court found that OPRA's privacy protections were inapplicable here because the underlying dispute was a public legal action that would have been open to public scrutiny had it proceeded to trial.

The court reasoned that when a government entity settles a public lawsuit, it cannot invoke privacy expectations to conceal the settlement terms. An employee who chose to bring a public action against the county could not reasonably expect the outcome to remain private, especially when disclosure concerns government conduct rather than personal information of third parties. The court concluded that transparency in government transactions—a core purpose of OPRA—outweighs any privacy interest the county sought to protect.

Summary generated by law.co from the public-domain opinion. The opinion text itself is public domain.

Key issues

  • Application of OPRA's privacy clause to settlement agreements from public litigation
  • Whether a government entity can invoke privacy protections for settlement amounts in public lawsuits
  • Scope of reasonable privacy expectations in government settlement disclosures
  • Entitlement to attorney's fees under OPRA

Procedural posture

The county appealed the Appellate Division's decision requiring disclosure of a settlement agreement and awarding attorney's fees to the plaintiffs.

Authorities cited

No cited authorities resolved to law.co cases yet.

Opinion

majority opinion

PER CURIAM

The judgment of the Appellate Division is affirmed substantially for the reasons expressed in Judge Ashrafi’s thoughtful opinion. Asbury Park Press v. Monmouth, 406 N.J.Super. 1, 966 A.2d 75 (App.Div.2009). We agree that the Open Public Records Act (OPRA), N.J.S.A 47:1A-1 to -13, requires disclosure of a settlement agreement between the County of Monmouth and an employee who filed a lawsuit claiming sex discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, and a hostile work environment. We also agree that plaintiff-appellants are entitled to reasonable attorney’s fees under OPRA, which the trial court is to determine on remand. We add only the following.

During oral argument before this Court, the County argued for the first time that the settlement agreement should not be disclosed in light of the ruling in Burnett v. County of Bergen, 198 N.J. 408, 968 A.2d 1151 (2009). We disagree.

This case is a far cry from Burnett. Burnett involved a request for eight million pages of various types of land title records, spanning a period of twenty-two years, which contained names, addresses, social security numbers, signature specimens, information on marital status, and details about mortgages for countless citizens. Id. at 416, 968 A.2d 1151. We noted that the bulk disclosure could expose an untold number of individuals to an increased risk of identity theft and held that the records could be disclosed after redaction of individual social security numbers. Id. at 415, 968 A.2d 1151. We reached that conclusion after analyzing OPRA’s text and balancing its competing aims of ready access to government records and protection of a citizen’s personal information. Id. at 414-15, 422-27, 968 A.2d 1151. In balancing those interests, we adopted and applied the seven factors outlined in Doe v. Poritz, 142 N.J. 1, 82-86, 662 A.2d 367 (1995). Burnett, supra, 198 N.J. at 427-37, 968 A.2d 1151.

The County seizes on OPRA’s privacy clause to try to prevent disclosure of the settlement agreement in this case. The privacy clause specifies that public agencies have “an obligation to safeguard from public access a citizen’s personal information with which it has been entrusted when disclosure thereof would violate the citizen’s reasonable expectation of privacy.” N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1.

OPRA’s privacy clause has no application here because this case does not implicate the concerns raised in Burnett. Even if the clause did apply, disclosure under the circumstances presented would not violate any reasonable expectation of privacy. Here, a former county employee chose to file a public action—a complaint against the County which was available to the public. Had the matter not settled, the lawsuit would have unfolded in a public trial, and any outcome would have been revealed in open court. To expect privacy in the outcome of a lawsuit against the County, then, is hardly reasonable and runs counter to OPRA’s core concern of transparency in government. A governmental entity cannot enter into a voluntary agreement at the end of a public lawsuit to keep a settlement confidential, and then claim a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the amount of that settlement.

We need go no further in addressing the County’s argument. There is no reason to analyze the Doe factors considered in Burnett.

The judgment of the Appellate Division is affirmed.

For affirmance—Chief Justice RABNER and Justices LONG, LaVECCHIA, ALBIN, WALLACE, RIVERA-SOTO and HOENS—7.

Opposed—None.