Opinion ID: 839191
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the effect of the passage of time

Text: We granted leave to appeal, limited to the issue whether the Court of Appeals erred in instructing [the circuit court], on remand, regarding the personal nature of public records covered by the Freedom of Information Act privacy exemption[ [18] ] or the law enforcement purposes privacy exemption,[ [19] ] including whether the personal nature of such records may be affected by the contemporaneous or later public status of some or all of the information.[ [20] ] We are not determining in this appeal whether the police incident report ultimately is exempt from disclosure. [21] The Court of Appeals made the following observation about the effect of the passage of time on the FOIA exemptions in this case: We note at the outset that the passage of time may have affected aspects of this appeal and that, while we can make some observations based on the record, there are other aspects about which we can only speculate. We know from the record that before it made its FOIA request to MSU, State News had already identified the three men arrested at Hubbard Hall. Thus, at least the names of these men and some identifying information about them were in the public domain. We know from the record that when President Simon issued her April 6, 2006, denial, these men had already been arraigned on charges of home invasion, felonious assault, and felony-firearm. Further information about these men might therefore have been in the public domain at that time, but the record before us does not disclose what that information might be. We also know from the record that when the trial court issued its June 8, 2006, decision, one of these men had been scheduled for trial and the preliminary examinations for the remaining two were scheduled for the next day. From the record before us, however, we do not know whether trials have now been held or, if so, what the results of those trials may have been and what information might have entered into the public domain during the course of later proceedings. Rather obviously, public bodies and trial courts can only make decisions on FOIA matters on the basis of the information that is before them at the time, and it is not the function of appellate courts to second-guess those decisions on the basis of information that later becomes available. Here, because we do not have the any information about what may have transpired after the trial court's June 8 decision, we could not engage in such second-guessing in any event. We do observe, however, that the subsequent availability of information as a result of later court proceedings in the criminal justice system may well strengthen or weaken the arguments of the parties to a FOIA dispute regarding the applicability of the privacy exemption and the law-enforcement-purpose exemption. As a practical matter, we suspect that this subsequent information, of which the trial court can take judicial notice on remand under appropriate procedures, will weaken MSU's position and strengthen State News's position. But, ironically, the newsworthiness of the information contained in the police incident report may also have decreased over time. However, FOIA is not concerned with newsworthiness. Rather, it is concerned with requiring the disclosure of nonexempt public records so as to ensure accountability.[ [22] ] The panel reiterated this observation when it discussed the first prong of the privacy exemption and noted that the passage of time and the course of events may have rendered some, if not all, of this information matters of public knowledge and therefore not of a personal nature. [23] We agree with the Court of Appeals statement that public bodies and trial courts can only make decisions on FOIA matters on the basis of the information that is before them at the time, and it is not the function of appellate courts to second-guess those decisions on the basis of information that later becomes available. We disagree, however, with the panel's further, contrary musings that the passage of time and subsequent events could negate the applicability of a FOIA exemption. Rather, we hold that unless the FOIA exemption provides otherwise, [24] the appropriate time to measure whether a public record is exempt under a particular FOIA exemption is the time when the public body asserts the exemption. The denial of a FOIA request occurs at a definite point in time. The public body relies on the information available to it at that time to make a legal judgment whether the requested public record is fully or partially exempt from disclosure. The determinative legal question for a judicial body reviewing the denial is whether the public body erred because the FOIA exemption applied when it denied the request. Subsequent developments are irrelevant to that FOIA inquiry. [25] There is no indication from the text of either the privacy or the law-enforcement-purposes exemption or from another, independent FOIA provision that the public body's assertion of a FOIA exemption may be reexamined by the circuit court or an appellate court while taking into consideration information not available to the public body when it denied the request. Further, the procedures in FOIA for submitting a FOIA request, reviewing the FOIA request, and appealing that review suggest that the timing of the public body's response to the FOIA request is crucial to deciding whether the requested record is exempt. FOIA requires the public body to respond to a FOIA request within 5 business days, with a possible extension of not more than 10 business days. [26] There is no language in that provision or elsewhere in FOIA that requires a public body to continue to monitor FOIA requests once they have been denied. [27] FOIA does not prevent a party that unsuccessfully requested a public record from submitting another FOIA request for that public record if it believes that, because of changed circumstances, the record can no longer be withheld from disclosure.