Bond OK for PRA PI

Stevenson v. City of Sacramento, No. C08065 (D3 Oct. 6, 2020)

The City of Sacramento changed its record retention policy such that it would save email for only two years. Shortly before the policy went into place, Plaintiffs sought all documents subject to deletion under the Public Records Act. Plaintiffs brought suit and obtained preliminary injunctions preventing deletions. But the trial court ordered them to post an $80k undertaking, based on the City’s estimate of the cost of retaining the documents for a year. The amount was later reduced to $2,350 after a better cost estimate was provided. Plaintiffs appealed.

So the question is, does Code of Civil Procedure § 529, which requires the posting of an undertaking to offset the cost of an improvidently granted PI, apply to PRA cases? Various statutes permitting injunctive relief have express exceptions to the bond requirement, but the PRA isn’t one of them. Plaintiffs nonethless raise a bevy of arguments why § 529 shouldn’t apply. The Court of Appeal, however, doesn’t buy them. 

Among other things, there’s no actual conflict between the statutes. Cases interpreting similar silence have found that § 529 applies to other types of statutorily authorized injunctive relief. Section 529 doesn’t impinge on the rights of the indigent to access public records, because the bond and undertaking law already has an exception for indigency. Nor does the state Constitutional mandate to read limits on the right of public access narrowly license reading § 529’s unambiguous bond requirement out of the statute. Finally, although some amici contend otherwise, a bond requirement is not actually a prior restraint prohibited by the First Amendment—it doesn’t stop anyone from saying anything.

Affirmed.

A Little Meta, But the Code Still Applies

City of L.A. v. Superior Court, No. B269525 (D2d7 Mar. 20, 2017)

Discovery in a public records act case is kind of confusing. After all, the whole purpose of the case is basically discovery. In this writ, the issue is whether, and to what extent, the Civil Discovery Act applies in cases brought under the Public Records Act.
 

Public Records Are Not Supposed to Be a Profit Center

Cal. Public Records Research, Inc. v. County of Stanislaus, No. F070601 (D5 Apr. 28, 2016)

Section § 27366 of the Government Code says that counties can charge a rate for the copying of public records sufficient to cover their costs. Stanislaus County charges three bucks for the first page, and two for each page thereafter. There is, however, no evidence that it actually costs that much to fulfill a public records request. So the Court of Appeal reverses a trial court’s dismissal of an administrative mandamus case and remands for the trial court to see what the evidence actually is.

Reversed.

Protective Order End-Around

Caldecott v. Superior Court, No. G051917 (D4d3 Dec. 18, 2015)

This is mostly a Public Records Act case, but it does make an interesting point about civil procedure. It also provides a useful tactical option. Plaintiff got some hot docs in discovery. He wants to publicly disclose them to blow the whistle on defendant, a school board. But he can’t because there’s a protective order limiting their use to the litigation. So he serves a PRA demand on the District, in order to obtain the docs outside of discovery. The court here holds that’s fine. The identity of the requester or his motives has no bearing on a PRA request. Either the docs are subject to an exemption or they aren’t. That a requester might intend to publicly disseminate the documents is not a legitimate reason to refuse to produce them. Indeed, that is the whole point of the PRA.

Writ granted.