Court Opinion

ID: 9685673
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:56:50.646607+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:09.239610
License: Public Domain

GARTZKE, P.J.
(dissenting). The only information Mayfair wants is the name of its ex-employee who gave information about Mayfair to the department of revenue. The tenacity with which Mayfair seeks that name should give the informer concern.
Governmental agencies must be able to protect confidential informers. Our courts have said time and again that persons in our society have a duty to report wrongdoing to the government. For that reason, law enforcement agencies are privileged on public policy grounds to *803withhold the names of informers in criminal and civil actions. Stelloh v. Liban, 21 Wis. 2d 119, 125-27, 124 N.W.2d 101, 104-05 (1963). The department has certain law enforcement functions. See secs. 73.03(3), (4), (8), (9), (10), (12) and 73.04(3), Stats.
Because of the department's law enforcement functions, the departmental employee who responded to Mayfair's request could have assumed that his or her refusal to disclose the informer's name was privileged. The employee could have assumed that no further explanation or weighing was necessary. The upshot of our opinion is that those assumptions were wrong, but the opinion may have shorn the informer of the protection he or she should have.
A petition for a peremptory writ of mandamus may be treated as one for an alternative writ and a fact-finding hearing may then be ordered. Schend v. The St. George's German Aid Society, 49 Wis. 237, 242, 5 N.W. 355, 357-58 (1880). If that is true, then no impediment should exist to the less drastic remedy of remanding for a better explanation.
We should direct the trial court to remand the matter to the agency to provide, if possible and justified, the reasons why the identity of the informer must be kept confidential. The trial court should retain jurisdiction and decide the matter on the basis of the agency's response.