Greenwich v. Freedom of Information Commission

Syllabus

The defendants, the Freedom of Information Commission (commission) and B, appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court sustaining the administrative appeal filed by the town plaintiffs from the final decision of the commission. The commission found that the plaintiffs violated the Freedom of Information Act (§ 1-200 et seq.) (act) by denying B's request for records of any changes made to an investigative file for a reported sexual assault and an associated application for an arrest warrant because the plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of proving that the requested records were exempt from disclosure as preliminary drafts or records of standards, procedures, processes, software and codes pursuant to statute (§ 1-210 (b) (1) and (20)). The court found that the commission's decision was clearly erroneous because the requested records were exempt from disclosure pursuant to § 1-210 (b) (1) as preliminary drafts. Held: 1. The trial court improperly substituted its judgment for that of the commis- sion by concluding that the requested records were preliminary drafts that were exempt from disclosure under § 1-210 (b) (1): because it was undisputed that the plaintiffs failed to conduct a search to determine whether the records requested by B existed and, to the extent they existed, to review such records, the plaintiffs could not satisfy their burden of establishing that those records were exempt from disclosure as the parties claiming the exemption, and they could not have conducted the statutorily mandated balancing test, which required that they deter- mine whether the public interest in withholding such documents clearly outweighed the public interest in disclosure, as that interest necessarily depended on the nature of the information contained in the records; moreover, the commission's order directing the plaintiffs to retrieve the requested records and to disclose them to B constituted an abuse of its discretion, and, accordingly, the appropriate