Case Name: SENTINEL COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY, Petitioner, v. The Honorable D.C. SMITH, etc., Respondent
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1986-07-03
Citations: 493 So. 2d 1048
Docket Number: No. 86-36
Parties: SENTINEL COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY, Petitioner, v. The Honorable D.C. SMITH, etc., Respondent.
Judges: DAUKSCH, J., concurs and concurs specially with opinion.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 493
Pages: 1048–1053

Head Matter:
SENTINEL COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY, Petitioner, v. The Honorable D.C. SMITH, etc., Respondent.
No. 86-36.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.
July 3, 1986.
Rehearing Denied Sept. 11, 1986.
William G. Mateer and Clay H. Coward, of Mateer & Harbert, P.A., Orlando, for petitioner.
E. Thom Rumberger, Sharon Lee Sted-man, Michael R. Levin, and David R. Gem-mer, of Rumberger, Kirk, Caldwell, Caban-iss & Burke, P.A., Orlando, for respondent Dominick J. Salfi.
Alan B. Robinson, Orlando, for Dominick J. Salfi, Jr., Dea Salfi Barrs and Don Salfi, respondents.
Mark P. Rabinowitz, of Heffeman & Ra-binowitz, P.A., Altamonte Springs, for Dawn Salfi, respondent.
No appearance for The Honorable D.C. Smith, Retired Circuit Judge.

Opinion:
COWART, Judge.
This case involves the rights of the parties, and children of the parties, to have the court records in a domestic relations case sealed and kept sealed as against the desire of a newspaper to have the court records unsealed and the contents published.
From time immemorial in Florida, and elsewhere, trial judges, particularly juvenile judges and chancery judges sitting in domestic relations cases, have had, and regularly exercised, an inherent judicial discretion to hear certain civil cases in chambers from which the public is excluded and to seal court records in civil cases in the interests of the rights of privacy of the litigants and witnesses and other third parties. It is an essential governmental function to provide citizens with an impartial forum in which they may present and resolve their private disputes and controversies. In order to fairly resolve many such private controversies it is necessary for the litigants and witnesses to assert and admit embarrassing intimate details of the private lives of the litigants and of innocent third persons. If this cannot be done without the deterrence of unwanted publicity the legal system cannot meet the basic need for which it is established. While citizens collectively as the general public have a right to know how the legal system is functioning — so that the system can be altered and reformed — neither the general public nor the press has a legitimate right to intrude into a long closed court case in order to learn, publish, and sell embarrassing assertions as to the intimate details of an individual citizen's private life, merely because the assertions and details have been disclosed in a judicial forum in a case involving private civil litigation to which the general public — the State — is not a party-
The case here is a usual domestic relations case. Court records of the case were sealed from public view and inspection by the original trial judge in a normal manner at the behest of one or more of the parties. That action was recognized as proper, and was ratified by the successor trial judge entering the final judgment in the case. Those discretionary judicial acts were not appealed and are presumed in law to be correct. There is absolutely no basis in the record in this case for considering, concluding, or holding that those two trial judges abused their judicial discretion in originally sealing the court records in this case.
Long after the final judgment was entered in the domestic relations case a newspaper filed a motion to intervene as a party in the closed case and also filed a motion to unseal the court case file. The same trial judge who entered the final judgment heard and considered the newspaper's motion to unseal the domestic relations court file. After the newspaper was duly given an opportunity to present evidence and legal argument, the trial court, with knowledge of the contents of the sealed court file, denied the newspaper's motion and the newspaper seeks review in this court under Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.100(d).
Certainly there can be real conflicts between the public's right of access to judicial proceedings and records, for the legitimate purpose of ascertaining if the judicial system is working properly, and the legitimate rights of every natural person to be let alone, with his private life and affairs free from intrusion by the government, the public at large, and the press. Newspapers have no greater or different right of access to court proceedings and court records than does the public in general, and the public's right to know is not all encompassing or absolute. In this case, as in all cases, the burden is on the movant, the newspaper here, to demonstrate to the trial court that the original order sealing the court records was legally in error, or if the original sealing was correct, to demonstrate that there has been such a substantial, material change in circumstances that under law it is error to keep the court records sealed. No such showing was made in this case. On this review the burden is on the petitioner to demonstrate that the trial judge has abused his discretion. This has not been done.
The fact that the husband-father in the domestic relations case was, and is, a judge does not distinguish this case from all other similar cases. People get married and divorced, not as judges, doctors, lawyers, editors, preachers, policemen, plumbers, plasterers, or painters, but as natural human beings just as all other citizens. The husband-father and the wife-mother and their children in this case have, and should have, the same rights in domestic relation litigation as every other citizen — no more and no less. If the privacy rights of the litigants and third persons in this case are not recognized and respected, then no citizen has any right of privacy in private litigation.
PETITION FOR REVIEW CONSIDERED; ORDER REVIEWED AFFIRMED.
DAUKSCH, J., concurs and concurs specially with opinion.
SHARP, J., dissents with opinion.
. The United States Supreme Court has long recognized that several of the fundamental constitutional guarantees have created a penumbral right to privacy that is no less important than the rights expressly specified in the Constitution. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965). See also Art. I, § 23, Fla.Const.