Court Opinion

ID: 9640579
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:08:42.380144+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:41.282314
License: Public Domain

CADENA, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
The majority opinion gives two reasons for its refusal to discuss the merits of relators’ contentions which are based on the important right of the public to free access to judicial records. The first justification is that the question of the right of access “was not before the trial court.” According to the majority opinion, the trial court declined to consider these questions and to set aside the secrecy order because, since the trial court had “no choice” but to strike the plea in intervention, there was no need to determine whether the trial court should have modified or vacated its secrecy order. The notion that a question which a trial court “declined” to consider establishes that such question “was not before the trial court” is surely a novel one. However, the merits of this argument need not here be considered. The conclusion that the trial court properly refused to consider the motion to vacate the secrecy order because the relators were not entitled to intervene runs afoul of the reasoning in the cases on which the majority relies in determining that relators had no right to intervene.
The second justification for the dismissal of relators’ contentions based on the right of access to judicial records is somewhat puzzling. We are told that an appellate *889court “may not deal with disputed areas of fact in mandamus proceedings.” The majority makes no effort to identify the disputed “areas of fact” which limit consideration of relators’ contention based on the right of access. There are, in truth, no such disputed areas of fact.
Since the majority opinion rests solely on the cases dealing with the right to intervene after judgment and the conclusion which is drawn from such cases, a discussion of such cases is required. At the outset, it must be noted that only Times Herald Printing Co. v. Jones, 730 S.W.2d 648 (Tex.1987) (per curiam), involved the public’s right of access to judicial records, and the opinion in that case, like the majority opinion here, avoids discussion of that right and concentrates solely on strictly procedural rules relating to intervention. In any event, Times Herald differs from this case because, there, the attempt to intervene came after the trial court had lost its plenary power over its judgment.
In Comal County Rural High School District v. Nelson, 158 Tex. 564, 314 S.W.2d 956 (1958), the right of the State of Texas to intervene after judgment was denied. The Supreme Court said, “No plea of intervention could be filed in the cause until and unless the district judge set aside his order_” Id. 314 S.W.2d at 957.
There is an important distinction between Comal County and the case before us. There, several school district patrons were attacking the validity of the creation of the district. The suit, therefore, involved a question in which the State of Texas had a legitimate, if not exclusive, interest. Under these circumstances, the State could have intervened in the case prior to rendition of judgment against the school patrons. In our case, relators had no legitimate interest in the suit for damages. None of the rights asserted by the parties in the damage suit could foreseeably result in a judgment affecting the rights of rela-tors. As pointed out in St. Paul Fire Insurance Co. v. Rahn, 586 S.W.2d 701, 703 (Tex.Civ.App.—Corpus Christi 1979, no writ), a case in which the party seeking to intervene after judgment could have done so before the judgment was rendered, a party seeking to intervene “bears the burden to show a justiciable interest, legal or equitable....” It was not until rendition of judgment in the damage suit and the entry of the secrecy order that any interest of relators, legal or equitable, was affected.
In First Alief Bank v. White, 682 S.W.2d 251, 252 (Tex.1984), no effort was made to intervene until after the trial court had lost jurisdiction over the case. The Supreme Court, relying on Comal County, said that a plea in intervention “comes too late if filed after judgment and may not be considered until the judgment has been set aside.” Id. Of course, under the facts of First Alief Bank, the trial court had lost its power to set aside the judgment.
If it is true that intervention after judgment is not possible until after the judgment has been set aside, then the critical question in this case is not the striking of the plea in intervention, but the refusal of the trial court to vacate the secrecy order. Such refusal is not addressed by the majority, although the setting aside of such order is obviously the only relief sought by relators, and the attempt to intervene was no more than one means of achieving that end.
As pointed out in the first paragraph of this dissent, the majority argues that there was no need for the trial court to consider relators’ rights of access and to determine whether to set aside the secrecy order because it had “no choice” but to deny the intervention. The reasoning is somewhat strange.
According to the authorities relied on by the majority, the plea in intervention could not be considered until the judgment was set aside. The majority somehow manages to conclude that, since the intervention could not be considered until after the judgment had been set aside, the trial court was precluded from setting the judgment aside because relators’ right to intervene had been denied. Reduced to basic and simple terms, the argument is that intervention was improper because the judgment had not been set aside, and the judg*890ment could not be set aside because rela-tors could not intervene. Either the argument is circular or the majority has managed to pull itself off the ground by strenuously tugging at its own bootstraps.
The importance of the right of public access to court records cannot be questioned. The requirement of openness is basic to our form of government. Only by giving the greatest possible publicity to the acts of public officials can we make effective the guaranteed freedom of discussion of the acts of such officials and the proceedings of public tribunals. If judge and counsel are required to act under the public gaze they are more strongly moved to strict conscientiousness in the performance of their duties. Throughout history, secret tribunals have exhibited abuses which are absent when judicial proceedings and records are freely accessible to the public. See In re Shorridge, 99 Cal. 526, 34 P. 227, 228 (1893); 6 J. WIGMORE, EVIDENCE § 1834 (Chadboum rev. ed. 1976).
The right of the press and public to have access to judicial records is guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Globe Newspaper Co. v. Superior Court, 457 U.S. 596, 604, 102 S.Ct. 2613, 2618, 73 L.Ed.2d 248 (1982); Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 559, 100 S.Ct. 2814, 2818, 65 L.Ed.2d 973 (1980) (Stewart, J., concurring). Recognition of this right by the common law antedates federal and state constitutions. United States v. Mitchell, 551 F.2d 1252, 1260 (D.C.Cir.1976), rev’d on other grounds sub nom Nixon v. Warner Communications, Inc., 435 U.S. 589, 98 S.Ct. 1306, 55 L.Ed.2d 570 (1978); Bundy v. State, 455 So.2d 330 (Fla.1984). In Nixon v. Warner Communications, Inc., supra, the United States Supreme Court not only reaffirmed the existence of this right but held that there is a presumption of the right of access to judicial records. This presumption casts upon those seeking to block such access the burden of establishing the existence of facts which justify secrecy. Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court, 464 U.S. 501, 511, 104 S.Ct. 819, 825, 78 L.Ed.2d 629 (1984). No other rule is consistent with the traditional principle that the public has “the right to know what is done in their courts.” In re Shortridge, 34 P. at 228-29. “What happens in the court room is public properly.... There is no special perquisite of the judiciary which enables it, as distinguished from other institutions of democratic government, to suppress, edit or censor events which transpire in proceedings before it.” Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367, 374, 67 S.Ct. 1249, 1254, 91 L.Ed. 1546 (1947).
The fact that in this case a settlement agreement is involved is irrelevant, even if we ignore the fact that the secrecy order is not limited to the settlement agreement. A settlement agreement filed with the court or incorporated in the judgment becomes a part of the public records as a public component of a trial, especially where, as here, approval by the court of the settlement is essential because it involves the rights of minors. The court’s approval of a settlement is a matter which the public has a right to know and evaluate.
I have no difficulty in concluding that both the public and the news media have standing to challenge any secrecy order. Recognition of such a rule is, at least in some cases, essential to the preservation of the right of access. For example, in this case all parties to the damage action are determined to uphold the secrecy order. Unless standing of the public and the news media to challenge the attempt at secrecy is recognized, the attempt to deny access to judicial records is immunized against challenge.
It can be freely admitted that the right of access is not absolute. But those opposing access are required to show “an overriding interest” based on findings that closure is narrowly tailored to serve that interest. The proponents of secrecy in this case have made no such showing.