56 A.D.2d 762 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1977
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County, entered June 7, 1976, in an article 78 proceeding seeking, inter alia, to review respondents’ refusal to create and maintain an index by subject matter of all decisions pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, from which petitioners appeal only that part of the judgment stating that such an index is not necessary, unanimously affirmed, without costs and without disbursements. Article 6 (§ 88, subd 4) of the Public Officers Law (Freedom of Information Law) requires the respondents to "maintain and make available for public inspection and copying * * * a current list, reasonably detailed, by subject matter of any records”. The respondents maintain a list of records and one of the subjects on the list is "final opinions * * * made in the adjudication of cases”. The appellants contend that both the statute and the requirements of due process necessitate the indexing by subject matter of the final opinions themselves. Recognizing that the statute does not expressly command an index by decisional topic of each final opinion, the appellants argue that it is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the Freedom of Information Law, and, further, that such an index is required under the Federal Freedom of Information Act (US Code, tit 5, § 552) upon which the State act is patterned and upon the decisional interpretations of which we should rely