Court Opinion

ID: 9544043
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:51:32.941644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:11:52.003025
License: Public Domain

Shea, J.
(dissenting). The issue here is not one of confrontation between the constitutional powers of the judiciary and the legislature but simply of legislative intention. It must be borne in mind that when the Personal Data Act became effective on July 1,1977,1 the restrictions upon disclosure of the PSI established by Practice Book, 1978, $ 917 were already in place.2 The provision of § 4-194 (a) that an agency may refuse to disclose personal data to a person where such “nondisclosure ... is otherwise permitted or required by law . . . and shall refuse disclosure when required by law” certainly indicates no desire to override any authoritatively issued restriction upon access to such information existing at the time that enactment became effective. The common meaning of “law” includes “a rule . . . that is prescribed or formally recognized as bind*164ing by a supreme controlling authority or is made obligatory by a sanction . . . made, recognized, or enforced by the controlling authority.” Webster, Third New International Dictionary; see Water Commissioners v. Curtis, 87 Conn. 506, 509, 89 A. 189 (1913). Unquestionably the rules of practice fall within this definition since they have not only a statutory but a constitutional basis. State v. Clemente, 166 Conn. 501, 514, 353 A.2d 723 (1974); In re Appeal of Dattilo, 136 Conn. 488, 492, 72 A.2d 50 (1950). In its plural form, “laws,” the word has sometimes been employed more narrowly to refer only to legislative enactments, i.e., “statutes.” Water Commissioners v. Curtis, supra, 509. It is improbable that this more limited meaning was intended by the use of the word in its singular form because in § 4-192 (c) (Rev. to 1979), another section of the Personal Data Act which was enacted at the same time3 as §4-194 (a) but has since been repealed4 the phrase “authorized by statute” was used to describe a circumstance in which consent would not be required for the disclosure of personal data. “It is a familiar principle of statutory construction that where the same words are used in a statute two or more times they will ordinarily be given the same meaning in each instance.” State ex rel. Hyde v. Dowe, 129 Conn. 266, 271, 28 A.2d 12 (1942). It is a logical corollary that the use of different words in the same enactment must indicate a difference in legislative intention. Fritz v. Madow, 179 Conn. 269, 272, 426 A.2d 268 (1979). The exclusion carved out of the Personal Data Act for legally authorized nondisclosure provisions must, therefore, be taken to encompass any nondisclosure sanctioned by a rule of practice unless the rule itself is invalid.
*165The majority professes (see footnote 13, supra) to have avoided the necessity of deciding whether the rules of practice are “law” as that word is used in § 4-194 by taking the route that the provisions of Practice Book § 917, which effectively prevent the plaintiff from obtaining a copy of his PSI from the prison authorities, are invalid, because they conflict with the substantive right to do so created by the Personal Data Aet. This rationale is a classic example of question begging, argumentum in orbem. It assumes the very point at issue, whether the legislature intended that a prisoner should have a right to examine his PSI when its disclosure is prohibited by a rule of practice. This assumption is then employed to declare the rule invalid insofar as it denies the substantive right of access purportedly created by the statute on the ground that a rule of practice cannot modify such a right.
Unless § 917 exceeds the judicial power, both statutory and constitutional, to adopt rules of practice, it is “law” and its restrictions upon availability of the PSI must have been accepted by the legislature in the exclusion created by § 4-194 (a) from the Personal Data Act requirements. “[C]ourts have an inherent power, independent of statutory authorization, to prescribe rules to regulate their proceedings and facilitate the administration of justice as they deem necessary.” State v. Clemente, supra, 514. It was in the exercise of this power that the judges of the Superior Court adopted § 917 in 1976 as part of a major revision of the rules of criminal procedure.5 The purpose of the restrictions upon access to the PSI was not only to protect the privacy of the defendant in a criminal case but *166also to protect the identity of the sources interviewed by the probation officers in preparing their reports and the content of conununications they often received in confidence. That the protection of sources was a significant factor in the adoption of the rule is indicated by the provisions for delivering a copy of the report to the “defendant or his counsel” (emphasis added), and also those for the return of all such copies and against duplication thereof. Practice Book §§ 915, 916. The alternative formulation follows the statute; General Statutes § 54-91b; and seems to have been designed to accommodate the few defendants who act without counsel in serious criminal matters where a PSI is required. See General Statutes § 54-91a. For the remainder the judges as well as the legislature have chosen to rely upon the discretion of counsel not to reveal to his client confidential source information which might provoke reprisals. The wisdom of this policy is not before us at this time.
The majority opinion does not question the power of the judges to adopt the prohibitions against public access to the. PSI under their authority to “facilitate the administration of justice.” Only the restriction upon a defendant’s access after his PSI comes into the possession of the institution to which he has been committed is found to be invalid. The portion of Practice Book § 917 allowing correctional or mental health institutions to receive a copy of the report for an inmate committed to their custody was inserted to conform the rule to General Statutes § 54-91a which contains a similar provision. This accommodation of the legislative will by the judiciary can hardly be given the effect of invalidating restrictions upon disclosure which would otherwise come within the judicial power. The legislature *167deliberately excluded “courts” from the definition of “agency” to which the Personal Data Act applies. General Statutes §4-190 (a). The plaintiff, therefore, could not obtain a copy of his PSI unless it had been transmitted to the correctional institution holding him pursuant to the provisions of § 917 adopted in deference to § 54-91a. It is paradoxical that this provision, included in § 917 to avoid a conflict between the rule and the statute, has been deemed by the majority to infect the disclosure restrictions established by the rule with the fatal virus of invalidity. This result is especially ironical when the legislature has expressly excluded legally sanctioned nondisclosure from the operation of the Personal Data Act. For these reasons, I dissent.
In this opinion Wright, J., concurred.

 Public Acts 1976, No. 76-421, § 9.

 Practice Book, 1963, §2328 (effective October 1, 1976).

 Publie Acts 1976, No. 76-421, §§ 3, 7, 9.

 Public Acts 1979, No. 79-538, §2.

 Practice Book, 1963, § 2328, adopted June 7, 1976, to take effect October 1, 1976; Orland, Connecticut Criminal Procedure § 2328.