Public record request cannot be denied on the pleadings

Bain v. Clark, 2012 VT 14 (Johnson, J.)
In this appeal, we are asked to consider whether “radio dispatch and unit logs” generated by police are exempt from disclosure under the Vermont Access to Public Records Act. The trial court found the records exempt from disclosure under 1 V.S.A. § 317(c)(5) as “records dealing with the detection and investigation of crime,” and dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted. We reverse and remand.

In reviewing such rulings, we employ the same standard as the trial court: “A motion for failure to state a claim may not be granted unless it is beyond doubt that there exist no facts or circumstances that would entitle the plaintiff to relief.” Kaplan v. Morgan Stanley & Co., 2009 VT 78, ¶ 7, 186 Vt. 605, 987 A.2d 258 (mem.) (quotations omitted). “We assume that all factual allegations pleaded in the complaint are true, accept as true all reasonable inferences that may be derived from plaintiff’s pleadings, and assume that all contravening assertions in defendant’s pleadings are false.” Mahoney v. Tara, LLC, 2011 VT 3, ¶ 7, __ Vt. __, 15 A.3d 122 (mem.) (quotation, brackets, and ellipses omitted).

Applying this standard, we must reverse and remand. Section 317(c)(5) exempts records: “dealing with the detection and investigation of crime, including those maintained on any individual or compiled in the course of a criminal or disciplinary investigation by any police or professional licensing agency; provided, however, records relating to management and direction of a law enforcement agency and records reflecting the initial arrest of a person and the charge shall be public. “ Bain sought the production of “any and all computer, telephone or otherwise generated radio dispatch unit log[s] of [his] arrest and the bona fide activities of law enforcement for the days of May 22 and 23, 2003.” Assuming these radio dispatch and unit logs do exist, we cannot discern from the record precisely what information they might contain. We cannot assume, consistent with the purpose of the PRA, that simply because the records at issue were generated by a law enforcement agency, they necessarily are records “dealing with the detection and investigation of crime.”

Because the evidence in this case has not yet been fully developed, we cannot discern if police radio and dispatch unit logs are the type of records that the Legislature intended to shield from view under § 317(c)(5). On remand, the court’s evaluation of whether these logs are “records dealing with the detection and investigation of crime” should be guided by the purposes underlying the statutory exemption and the factors discussed in Walton, where we concluded that neither arrest records nor criminal citations were “records dealing with the detection and investigation of crime” under 1 V.S.A. § 317(b)(5). Caledonian Record Publ’g Co. v. Walton, 154 Vt. 15, 21, 573 A.2d 296, 299 (1990) (explaining that this nation’s founding fathers “thought secrecy in government one of the instruments of Old World tyranny and committed itself to the principle that a democracy cannot function unless the people are permitted to know what their government is up to” (citation omitted)).