Opinion ID: 2191418
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: I-D Procedural History.

Text: On October 13, 1977, Equifax, and the other plaintiffs, instituted a civil action in the Superior Court (Kennebec County) against the then Attorney General of Maine, Joseph E. Brennan. Plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment adjudicating that certain provisions of the Maine Act, about to take effect on October 24, 1977, were unconstitutional, and plaintiffs asked that the Attorney General be permanently enjoined from enforcing such provisions of the Act as would be adjudicated unconstitutional. When the Maine Act became effective on October 24, 1977, a temporary restraining order was issued. It was subsequently dissolved when, on December 14, 1977, the Superior Court Justice refused to order issuance of a preliminary injunction. As we have mentioned, amendments to the Maine Act became effective in July, 1978. Thereafter, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint which restated their attack upon the Maine Act as it read before being amended and added further challenges to the Act in light of the amendments to it. The defendant Attorney General moved to dismiss on grounds of mootness those paragraphs of the amended complaint challenging sections of the Act that had been repealed or modified. The Justice denied this motion, and defendant's appeal includes an attack on the correctness of that ruling. A hearing on the merits was held in November 1978, at which plaintiffs presented several witnesses and introduced numerous exhibits. Defendant presented no witnesses but introduced exhibits including: (1) a deposition of the plaintiffs Weeks and Robinson; (2) numerous examples of the forms used by Equifax in collecting and reporting information; (3) excerpts from manuals used by employees of Equifax to guide them in the preparation of reports. [7] On the basis of the record made before him, the Superior Court Justice held unconstitutional two sections of the Maine Act in both their originally enacted and subsequently amended versions: (1) Section 1314, as requiring a consumer's prior consent before an investigative consumer report on him may be procured, and (2) Section 1321, as outlawing the preparation and sale of reports containing delineated categories of prohibited information. The ground of decision was that these sections violated the First Amendment, as made binding on the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, to the Constitution of the United States. The Superior Court Justice also adjudicated that particular prohibitions contained in Section 1321 were so vague that they could not meet the due process of law guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment. In accordance with his determinations, the Justice permanently enjoined the defendant Attorney General from enforcing those provisions of the Maine Act adjudicated unconstitutional. The Justice either rejected, or made no decision regarding, other constitutional challenges asserted by plaintiff: challenges predicated on the due process of law, commerce clause, supremacy clause, and equal protection of the laws provisions of the federal Constitution. From the judgment entered embodying the conclusions and actions of the Superior Court Justice, defendant has appealed to this Court. In addition, as we stated earlier, plaintiffs have taken a cross appeal in which they attack as erroneous the Superior Court's determination of, or omission to decide, the various other constitutional issues raised.