Court Opinion

ID: 9792454
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:29:42.677318+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:42.954102
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Justice
(dissenting):
I dissent because I believe that the majority opinion departs from basic legal principles and allows destruction of important privacy interests of litigants and witnesses who are subjected to pretrial discovery measures.
*1101One who testifies on deposition is often subjected to a wide-ranging inquiry into a variety of highly private matters. Parties and witnesses in a lawsuit can be required to testify as to the most intimate details and activities of their lives. In divorce and custody cases, for example, the most prevalent type of civil litigation in our courts, litigants and witnesses may be required to testify concerning their sexual practices, habits, and preferences; financial affairs; business affairs; and relationships with their spouses, children, parents, and others, as well as past misdeeds and failures. Virtually nothing in one’s life is safe from compelled disclosure once one becomes enmeshed in a lawsuit either as a party or as a witness. Exploration of such highly personal, private, and confidential matters often occurs in pretrial depositions, where the boundaries of relevancy are extremely broad. Unrestricted public access to deposition transcripts and other discovery materials could constitute a devastating intrusion on one’s personal right of privacy and possibly irreparable loss of reputation and status.
The majority holds that there is a public right to inspect court records based on Utah Code Ann. §§ 78-26-1 and 78-26-2 of the Utah Public and Private Writings Act. Those sections provide a right to inspect and copy “public writings” of the state.1 Specifically, the majority holds that “sealed, pretrial depositions which are filed with a court are presumptively public” under the Act, but that public access can be defeated by a protective order from the court based on good cause. There is nothing whatsoever in the Act that establishes a presumption, and a protective order may offer protection of some degree to a party, if one can be obtained. But the possible availability of a protective order to a witness is not much protection since the witness may never know that pretrial access to his or her deposition is sought.
The Public Writings Act provides right of access to documents that are “public writings.” The definition of that term includes “[¡judicial records.” The question is whether discovery materials not used in official judicial proceedings are “[¡judicial records.” The general rule has long been that there is no right of access to pretrial discovery materials and that such materials are not public documents. One commentator has explained that a historical examination “reveals that the presumption of access to court records does not apply to pretrial documents.” Recent Development-Public Access to Civil Court Records: A Common Law Approach, 39 Vand.L.Rev., 1465, 1494 (1986). A court in the last century explained: “The public have no rights to any information on private suits till they come up for public hearing or action in open court....” Park v. Detroit Free Press Co., 72 Mich. 560, 568, 40 N.W. 731, 734 (1888). Another commentator, having analyzed judicial precedent through 1983, stated: “[Tjhere is no persuasive legal support for an unfettered constitutional or common law right of general public access to civil discovery materials.” Marcus, Myth and Reality in Protective Order Litigation, 69 Cornell L.Rev. 1, 29 (1983). The same authority stated: “[Pjretrial proceedings are analytically distinct from actual trial proceedings for purposes of public disclosure and ... material disclosed in private litigation, even if filed in court, is not presumptively public.” Id. at 33 n. 136.
It is important to bear in mind that the Society of Professional Journalists, which seeks disclosure here, does not claim a constitutional right of access to pretrial discovery materials. Nor could it legitimately assert such a right. The United States Supreme Court has squarely held that there is no such right of access to pretrial discovery materials under the First Amend*1102ment. Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart, 467 U.S. 20, 104 S.Ct. 2199, 81 L.Ed.2d 17 (1984). The words of former Chief Justice Burger, quoted by then-Judge Scalia of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in In re Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 773 F.2d 1325 (D.C.Cir.1985), are especially appropriate here:
[Djuring the last 40 years in which the pretrial processes have been enormously expanded, it has never occurred to anyone, as far as I am aware, that a pretrial deposition or pretrial interrogatories were other than wholly private to the litigants.
773 F.2d at 1338 (quoting Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 396, 99 S.Ct. 2898, 2914, 61 L.Ed.2d 608, 632 (1979) (Burger, C.J., concurring)). That is precisely what the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in United States v. Anderson, 799 F.2d 1438 (1986), held in denying access to pretrial discovery in a criminal case. The court noted that voluntary discovery would be “chilled” if it were readily available to the press. 799 F.2d at 1441. The court stated:
Discovery is neither a public process nor typically a matter of public record. Historically, discovery materials were not available to the public or press.... Moreover, documents collected during discovery are not “judicial records.” Discovery, whether civil or criminal, is essentially a private process because the litigants and the courts assumed that the sole purpose of discovery is to assist trial preparation.
799 F.2d at 1441 (citations omitted). Accord Littlejohn v. BIC Corp., 851 F.2d 673, 679-80 nn. 13-14 (3d Cir.1988); United States v. Beckham, 789 F.2d 401, 411 (6th Cir.1986); Ball Memorial Hosp., Inc. v. Mutual Hosp. Ins., Inc., 784 F.2d 1325, 1346 n. 2 (7th Cir.1986); State ex rel. Bingaman v. Brennan, 98 N.M. 109, 112, 645 P.2d 982, 985 (1982).
The majority attempts to support its conclusion by relying on the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of Judicial Administration. The majority relies on Rule 5(d) of the Rules of Civil Procedure, which states that all papers after the complaint which must be “served upon a party shall be filed” with the court, but that discovery materials need “not be filed unless on order of the court or for use in the proceeding.” The latter phrase was added in recent amendments to the rules to relieve court clerks of the very large burden of having to store huge volumes of discovery materials, many of which are never actually used in litigation. If that rule is relevant at all, it tends to weigh in favor of the proposition that pretrial documents are not public writings.
The majority argues that filing is the “touchstone for public access,” relying on the Advisory Committee’s notes to Rule 5(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That is not a correct statement either of federal law or of Utah law. Indeed, it is at odds with a number of Utah cases that require more than simple filing for pretrial materials to be deemed part of a judicial record. Rule 30(f)(1) of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure provides that a deposition should be sealed by the officer taking the deposition and filed “with the court in which the action is pending....” But depositions and other discovery materials may not be used even if filed in the trial court, unless they are presented to the trial court for use in a judicial proceeding or ordered published by the trial judge. Bawden & Assocs. v. Smith, 646 P.2d 711, 713 (Utah 1982); Schubach v. Wagner, 14 Utah 2d 335, 384 P.2d 110 (1963); Thompson v. Ford Motor Co., 14 Utah 2d 334, 384 P.2d 109 (1963); Rosander v. Larsen, 14 Utah 2d 1, 376 P.2d 146 (1962). See also Lundquist v. Kennecott Copper Co., Inc., 30 Utah 2d 262, 269, 516 P.2d 1182, 1186 (1973) (Ellett, J., dissenting). Reliable Furniture Co. v. Fidelity & Guaranty Insurance Underwriters, Inc., 14 Utah 2d 169, 380 P.2d 135 (1963), stated that depositions which were not published or presented to the trial court were “not in the record before the trial court.” 14 Utah 2d at 170, 380 P.2d at 135. See also Augustine v. First Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass’n of Gary, 270 Ind. 238, 241, 384 N.E.2d 1018, 1020 (1979) (“We hereby hold that publication of a deposition is still required in order to place a deposition before the court_”).
*1103Under a recent amendment to Rule 32(d) of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure, a formal order of publication is no longer necessary to admit a deposition to the record. Now a deposition need only be used in a hearing or at trial to be deemed part of the official record. The actual use of a deposition in a judicial proceeding is therefore the equivalent of an order of publication, but that does not alter the proposition that prior to use, a deposition is not a public document.
The media rely on Rule 26(c)(6) of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure, which provides authority for a court to “seal” depositions, but that does not support the media’s proposition that depositions that are not subject to a protective order are public documents. The purpose of Rule 26(c)(6) is simply to provide a way for a court to protect all or part of a deposition from public disclosure, irrespective of whether the deposition becomes part of the judicial record. For example, trade secrets and other sensitive information in a deposition subject to a protective order continue to be subject to that order even after the deposition is published.
The majority asserts that the cases are evenly split in terms of supporting or opposing the proposition that unpublished depositions are public documents. In truth, the majority simply selects a few cases on both sides and then declares an even split. That does not begin to give an accurate view of the state of the law. Note 4 of the majority opinion cites four cases which it states “support ... the position that filed depositions are public....” An examination of those cases reveals that several do not support the majority’s view. For example, the majority cites Wilson v. American Motors Co., 759 F.2d 1568 (11th Cir.1985), but does not recognize that the opinion states: “We shall apply the standard set out in Newman [v. Graddick, 696 F.2d 796, 802 (11th Cir.1983)]: ‘We do not hold that every ... deposition ... in a case of this kind must be open to the public.’ ” 759 F.2d at 1571 (emphasis added). The majority’s reliance on Ocala Star Banner Corp. v. Sturgis, 388 So.2d 1367, 1371 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1980), is plainly misplaced. That case states that “once the deposition is taken, transcribed and filed in the court file, there is a right of access” by the public in the absence of a protective order. However, that statement must be read in conjunction with Rule 1.310(f)(3) of the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure which, unlike the Utah Rules, states that a deposition may be filed “only ... when the contents of the deposition must be considered by the court.” Similarly, the final case cited by the majority, Sanders v. Drane, 432 S.W.2d 54 (Ky.Ct.App.1968), states that “depositions required to be filed ... under CR 30.06(1) become public records_” Other cases cited by the majority as generally supporting the proposition that filed depositions are completely open to public inspection must be read in light of local rules, a process in which the majority fails to engage. E.g., C.P.C. Partnership Bardot Plastics v. P.T.R., Inc., 96 F.R.D. 184 (E.D.Pa.1982). But see Rule 24(c), Federal Local Court Rules (E.D.Pa.).
Clearly, once depositions are used in a judicial proceeding, their status changes and they become part of the public judicial record, unless subject to a protective order. The cases cited by the majority for the proposition that discovery depositions are public documents simply have to be read in light of that general rule. The United States Supreme Court recognized in Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart, 467 U.S. 20, 104 S.Ct. 2199, 81 L.Ed.2d 17 (1984), that discovery depositions are part of a “private process.” The Court stated:
Moreover, pretrial depositions and interrogatories are not public components of a civil trial. Such proceedings were not open to the public at common law, Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 US 368, 389, 61 L Ed 2d 608, 99 S Ct 2898 [2910] (1979), and, in general, they are conducted in private as a matter of modern practice. See id., at 396 [99 S.Ct. at 2913] ... (Burger, C.J., concurring); Marcus, Myth and Reality in Protective Order Litigation, 69 Cornell L Rev 1 (1983). Much of the information that surfaces during pretrial discovery may be unrelated, or only tangentially related, to the underlying *1104cause of action. Therefore, restraints placed on discovered, but not yet admitted, information are not a restriction on a traditionally public source of information.
467 U.S. at 33, 104 S.Ct. at 2214 (footnote omitted).
Trail Mountain Coal Co. v. Arco Coal Sales Co., 749 P.2d 637 (Utah 1988), does not contradict the position asserted here. In Trail Mountain, this Court held that the work product privilege did not apply to depositions and that depositions needed for use in other litigation could be discovered. Trail Mountain rests on the law enunciated by the United States Supreme Court in Ex Parte Uppercu, 239 U.S. 435, 36 S.Ct. 140, 60 L.Ed. 368 (1915), which determined that “absent a question of privilege a litigant who needs court records that may be of evidentiary value to his case cannot be denied access to them, even though they were sealed by the court in a different proceeding.” Note, Nonparty Access to Discovery Materials in the Federal Courts, 94 Harv.L.Rev. 1085, 1093 (1981). The right to depositions asserted in Trail Mountain is not a right enjoyed by the press and public generally.

. Utah Code Ann. § 78-26-1 (1987) provides: Public writings are divided into four classes:
(1) Laws.
(2) Judicial records.
(3) Other official documents.
(4) Public records, kept in this state, of private writings, which such records may be made by handwriting, typewriting, or as a photostatic microphotographic, photographic, or similar reproduction of such private writings.
Utah Code Ann. § 78-26-2 (1987) provides:
Every citizen has a right to inspect and take a copy of any public writing of this state except as otherwise expressly provided by statute.