Mancini Law Group, P.C. v. Schaumburg Police DepartmentMancini Law Group, P.C. v. Schaumburg Police Department
¶ 1 Held: The judgment of the circuit court is affirmed. Defendant did not waive its right to produce redacted accident reports under FOIA by providing unredacted copies of those reports to a third-party vendor for the State of Illinois for the purposes of complying with its mandatory reporting obligations under the Vehicle Code.
¶ 2 Plaintiff, Mancini Law Group, P.C., appeals from the circuit court’s entry of summary judgment in favor of defendant, Schaumburg Police Department. The circuit court found that there was no genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendant properly redacted information from the records it provided to plaintiff in response to plaintiff’s request under the Freedom of
I. BACKGROUND
¶ 4 Plaintiff sent a FOIA request to defendant seeking “all traffic accident reports for all motor vehicle accidents occurring within the Village of Schaumburg” for a two-week period during 2017. Plaintiff requested that defendant redact personal information—including driver’s license numbers, license plate numbers, and dates of birth—from the reports. Defendant granted in part and denied in part plaintiff’s request. Defendant asserted that driver’s license numbers, personal telephone numbers, home addresses, and license plate numbers were exempt from disclosure under section 7(1)(b) of FOIA (
¶ 5 Plaintiff filed a complaint in the circuit court of Cook County, asserting that it had sought nonexempt public records and that defendant’s redactions from the accident reports were willful and intentional violations of FOIA. Plaintiff sought declaratory and injunctive relief, civil penalties, and attorney fees. Defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s complaint was denied,1 and the parties engaged in discovery.
II. ANALYSIS
¶ 8 On appeal, plaintiff does not argue that the redacted information is not exempt under sections 7(1)(b) or 7(1)(c). As noted above, in plaintiff’s FOIA request, plaintiff requested that defendant redact the driver’s license numbers, license plate numbers, and dates of birth from the
¶ 9 Plaintiff relies on our supreme court’s decision in Lieber v. Board of Trustees of Southern Illinois University, 176 Ill. 2d 401 (1997) to argue that the voluntary disclosure of unredacted records in one situation precludes a later assertion that the previously unredacted information can be withheld as exempt from disclosure under FOIA. Plaintiff asks us to reverse the entry of summary judgment in favor of defendant.
¶ 10 Summary judgment is appropriate if the pleadings, depositions, affidavits, and other admissions on file establish that there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
¶ 11 Section 1 of FOIA provides, in part,
“Pursuant to the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of government, it is declared to be the public policy of the State of Illinois that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts and policies of those who represent them as public officials and public employees consistent with the terms of this Act. Such access is necessary to enable the people to fulfill their duties of discussing public issues fully and freely, making informed political judgments and monitoring government to ensure that it is being conducted in the public interest.
The General Assembly hereby declares that it is the public policy of the State of Illinois that access by all persons to public records promotes the transparency and accountability of public bodies at all levels of government. It is a fundamental obligation of government to operate openly and provide public records as expediently and efficiently as possible in compliance with this Act.
This Act is not intended to cause an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, nor to allow the requests of a commercial enterprise to unduly burden public resources, or to disrupt the duly-undertaken work of any public body independent of the fulfillment of any of the fore-mentioned rights of the people to access to information.”
5 ILCS 140/1 (West 2016).
¶ 13 Section 7(1) of FOIA provides:
“When a request is made to inspect or copy a public record that contains information that is exempt from disclosure under this Section, but also contains information that is not exempt from disclosure, the public body may elect to redact the information that is exempt. The public body shall make the remaining information available for inspection and copying.”
5 ILCS 140/7(1) (West 2016).
¶ 14 FOIA provides that certain information “shall be exempt from inspection and copying,” such as “private information, unless disclosure is required by another provision of this Act, a State or federal law or a court order.”
“Personal information contained within public records, the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, unless the disclosure is consented to in writing by the individual subjects of the information. ‘Unwarranted invasion of personal privacy’ means the disclosure of information that is highly personal or objectionable to a reasonable person and in which the subject’s right to privacy outweighs any legitimate public interest in obtaining the information. The disclosure of information that bears on the public
duties of public employees and officials shall not be considered an invasion of personal privacy.” Id. § 7(1)(c) .
¶ 15 In Lieber, our supreme court considered whether Southern Illinois University properly denied a FOIA request made by the plaintiff that sought “information about housing inquiries from or on behalf of people who had been accepted as freshman, but who had not yet enrolled.” 176 Ill. 2d at 410. Our supreme court found that the specific information sought by the plaintiff was not exempt under a FOIA exemption that applied “to ‘other individuals receiving*** educational *** services,’ as well as to ‘students.’ ” Id. at 410-411 (citing
¶ 16 Here, plaintiff concedes that “LexisNexis is acting as a contractor for the State of Illinois and a conduit for [defendant] to fulfill its reporting requirements to the State.” Section 11-408 of
¶ 17 Plaintiff relies on Lieber to argue waiver because defendant provides unredacted accident reports to LexisNexis, which, it contends, in turn sells the reports to the public for a profit. Plaintiff asserts that defendant did not establish that it is required to provide unredacted reports to LexisNexis to comply with its reporting obligations because defendant could manually provide the information directly to the State. This argument is unpersuasive where it is undisputed that the Vehicle Code requires defendant to send accident reports to the State and the State, in turn, directs that compliance is accomplished by the defendant sending the reports to the State’s agent, LexisNexis.
¶ 18 There is also a contractual agreement between defendant and LexisNexis. Requests for defendant’s accident reports are processed through LexisNexis for a $13 fee, with defendant receiving $5 from LexisNexis. Plaintiff argues that there are no restrictions in the agreement between defendant and LexisNexis on what LexisNexis may do with the unredacted accident reports it receives from defendant when it complies with the Vehicle Code reporting requirement. Plaintiff contends, therefore, that defendant should be barred from providing redacted versions to plaintiff because defendant voluntarily discloses the unredacted reports to LexisNexis while simultaneously withholding certain information from the general public unless the public pays a fee.
¶ 20 But here, the record clearly reflects that defendant provides the unredacted accident reports to LexisNexis for mandatory reporting purposes. Jennifer Brack, a corporate representative for defendant, testified that defendant had a contract with LexisNexis, “a contracted vendor for the [S]tate [of Illinois],” as part of defendant’s obligation to provide all accident reports to the State, which plaintiff does not dispute. Defendant uses LexisNexis to upload unredacted copies of the accident reports to the State. Anyone that wants to obtain a copy of an accident report may request the report in person, by mail, or through the LexisNexis website link provided on defendant’s website. Brack stated that “I believe [LexisNexis] ha[s] their own safeguards in place of who can purchase a report,” and further stated that “the only parties that can receive [an accident report] through [LexisNexis] are those parties directly involved,” such as the drivers or their insurers. Brack testified that it was her understanding that in order to obtain a report through LexisNexis, the requesting party would need to know specific information about the report, including the date of the accident, the location of the accident, and the accident report number. To complete a
¶ 21 Plaintiff does not direct our attention to any facts in the record to contradict Brack’s testimony, or that would call into question that defendant provides unredacted accident reports to LexisNexis to comply with its reporting obligations. Plaintiff’s argument that defendant failed to demonstrate that it is required to provide the reports to LexisNexis to comply with its statutory obligations finds no support in the record. Brack testified that defendant could either upload the accident reports to LexisNexis, or that the State could manually enter all the accident report data itself. Plaintiff does not cite any evidence in the record, or to any other authority, to support its contention that defendant’s statutorily mandated act of uploading the unredacted accident reports to a third-party State-approved vendor for transmission to the State is a public disclosure of the accident reports. Defendant is required to provide the State with the accident reports and there is nothing in the record to suggest that the availability of an alternative method—manual entry—undermines defendant’s invocation of the exemptions claimed.
¶ 22 Plaintiff insists that LexisNexis acts as a third-party reseller of the accident reports. This argument is premised on plaintiff’s theory that anyone can pay LexisNexis a $13 fee and obtain a copy of an unredacted accident report, and that defendant receives $5 from each accident report sold by LexisNexis. But plaintiff failed to present any admissible evidence to support its assertion that defendant’s unredacted accident reports are available to the public for a fee payable to LexisNexis. Plaintiff’s statement of facts directs us to an affidavit of Michael Camarata, an attorney at
¶ 23 Forfeiture aside, Camarata’s affidavit asserts that in January 2018, during the pendency of this case, he purchased an unredacted version of one of defendant’s accident reports from LexisNexis. The accident report and a receipt for his fee were attached to his affidavit. Camarata’s affidavit provides little factual insight into what information he provided to LexisNexis to purchase the accident report. As Brack testified, however, Camarata would have had to submit the names of the parties involved in the accident, the date and location of the accident, and the accident report number. The receipt for Camarata’s purchase indicates that he provided that information. Furthermore, in a section entitled “Purpose of Use,” Camarata listed “Legal.” Brack testified that an attorney representing an individual involved in a reported accident would be able to obtain an unredacted copy of that accident report. Absent any indication in Camarata’s affidavit as to whether he represented any party named in the accident report, the affidavit does not sufficiently support plaintiff’s conclusion that LexisNexis acts as a third-party reseller of unredacted accident reports without limitation. The record before us demonstrates that defendant only provides LexisNexis with unredacted accident reports in order to comply with its mandatory reporting obligations, and that purchases of unredacted copies of those reports—either through defendant directly or through LexisNexis—are limited to those who provide specific information at the time
¶ 24 The dissent distorts the state of the record to support its position. To be clear, if there was any admissible evidence that LexisNexis was selling unredacted accident reports, it was incumbent on plaintiff to submit that evidence. Plaintiff offered no credible evidence of LexisNexis’s sale policies or practices regarding defendant’s accident reports. The dissent repeatedly makes the unsupported assertion that LexisNexis is free to sell unredacted reports to the public (infra ¶¶ 32, 34-35, 38), despite Brack’s unrebutted testimony that purchasers must demonstrate some connection to an underlying accident before they can purchase an unredacted report through LexisNexis (supra ¶ 20). Neither plaintiff nor the dissent identifies any actual evidence in the record showing that LexisNexis sells the reports to the public with no restrictions. And while defendant’s contract with LexisNexis might be silent on whether there were restrictions on the distribution of the accident reports, the unrebutted testimony in the record shows that there were restrictions on who could purchase unredacted reports and these restrictions applied whether the request for a report was made to defendant or LexisNexis. If plaintiff wanted to establish an actual lack of restrictions or otherwise demonstrate a genuine issue of material fact—an issue plaintiff never raised or argued, and raised sua sponte by the dissent (infra ¶¶ 41-49)—it needed to present evidence of that in the circuit court and not rely on this court to fill that gap. It did not, and it is not the function of this court to advance arguments or to speculate on evidence that might have been presented to make plaintiff’s case.
¶ 25 The evidence and arguments advanced in support of plaintiff’s waiver argument are not supported by the record and do not demonstrate to our satisfaction that entry of summary judgment
III. CONCLUSION
¶ 27 For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the circuit court is affirmed.
¶ 28 Affirmed.
¶ 29 JUSTICE HYMAN dissenting:
¶ 30 I dissent both on the merits and on the majority issuing this decision as an Order under Supreme Court Rule 23(b) (eff. Apr. 1, 2018). On the merits, the majority justifies its conclusion by ignoring material facts, including that the mandatory reporting requirements and the sale of the unredacted reports are interrelated. Making matters worse, the majority cites no authority for its position. On issuing this decision as a Rule 23 Order, the criteria set out in Rule 23(a) belie the majority’s assessment. Moreover, the time has come for the Illinois Supreme Court to amend Rule 23(a) so a single panel member may designate a decision as precedential. This will contribute to the advancement, clarification, and evolution of the law in Illinois for the common benefit of the parties, their lawyers, the bench and bar, and, most of all, the people of the State of Illinois.
SPD Waived Denying FOIA Request
¶ 32 The Schaumburg Police Department contends it did not waive its right to withhold unredacted accident reports from a Freedom of Information Act request because LexisNexis, a
¶ 33 An analogous case, Lieber v. Board of Trustees of Southern Illinois University, 176 Ill. 2d 401 (1997), supports reversal. In Lieber, the Illinois Supreme Court held that Southern Illinois University must comply with a FOIA request when it disclosed the same information to other entities, including the local newspaper and religious organizations. Lieber, 176 Ill. 2d at 412-13. “Voluntary disclosure in one situation can preclude later claims that records are exempt from release to someone else.” Id. at 413 (citing Cooper v. United States Department of the Navy, 594 F. 2d 484, 485-86 (5th Cir. 1979). Applying this principle, the court noted, “[p]referential treatment of persons or interest groups fosters precisely the distrust of government the FOIA was intended to obviate.” Id. (citing State of North Dakota ex rel. Olson v. Andrus, 581 F. 2d 177, 182 (8th Cir. 1978).
¶ 34 Notwithstanding the majority’s efforts to dissociate Lieber from its holding, Lieber’s factual differences do not diminish applying the decision and its reasoning here. The majority attempts to distinguish Lieber on the grounds that SPD does not act “voluntarily” in complying with the mandatory administrative function performed by LexisNexis. But the flaw in the majority’s reasoning is its refusal to appreciate that SPD separately contracted with LexisNexis to also permit the company to market those unredacted reports to the public for a profit, and that voluntary act constitutes waiver, as in Lieber. Moreover, neither SPD nor the majority cite a single
¶ 35 The majority believes the analysis stops once LexisNexis satisfies SPD’s statutory reporting requirement. Indeed, if that were the sole purpose of providing the unredacted reports to LexisNexis, I would be inclined to agree. But SPD’s contract with LexisNexis violates the “selective disclosure,” or “preferred treatment” discussed in Lieber. The contract, which is in the record, places no restrictions on LexisNexis’s use of the unredacted reports or to whom LexisNexis may sell them. Also noteworthy, LexisNexis hands over part of its renumeration to SPD.
¶ 36 The Illinois FOIA Act is patterned after that federal statute and lawmakers intended that federal case law be used in interpreting the Act. Cooper v. Department of the Lottery, 266 Ill. App. 3d 1007, 1012 (1994). Regarding statutorily mandated disclosure and waiver, the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Watkins v. United States Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, 643 F. 3d 1189 (9th Cir. 2011), is instructive.
¶ 37 In Watkins, a copyright and trademarks attorney filed FOIA requests with the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, seeking Notices of Seizure of Infringing Merchandise (“Notices of Seizure”) sent by CBP to trademark owners after seizing counterfeit merchandise at a port. Id. at 1192. By statute, CBP must disclose the Notices of Seizure to the aggrieved trademark owner. See
¶ 39 Moreover, in claiming the right to refuse to release the same information under the FOIA request, SPD undermined the purpose of the FOIA, which is to “provide the public with easy access to government information.” Southern Illinoisian v. Illinois Department of Public Health, 218 Ill. 2d 390, 417 (2006). See BlueStar Energy Services, Inc. v. Illinois Commerce Commission, 374 Ill. App. 3d 990, 994 (2007) (“The purpose of the FOIA is to open governmental records to the light of public scrutiny”). To achieve that goal, our supreme court has held that the Act shall be accorded a liberal construction and the exceptions to disclosure narrowly construed. Southern Illinoisian, 218 Ill. 2d at 416. Indeed, under the FOIA, public inspection and copying of public records is presumed.
¶ 40 The majority’s holding opens a pungent loophole. It lets government entities avoid their responsibilities regarding public records under the FOIA while giving a freehand in marketing and selling unredacted public records to non-government, for-profit third-party vendors.
Disputed Questions of Fact
¶ 42 According to the majority, the record “clearly” reflects that SPD provides unredacted accident reports to LexisNexis for mandatory reporting purposes. The majority quotes the deposition testimony of Jennifer Brack, that she “believe[s] [LexisNexis] ha[s] their own safeguards in place of who can purchase a report,” and, to obtain a report through LexisNexis, “her understanding” was that the requesting party would need to know specific information about the report, including the date of the accident, the location of the accident, and the accident report
¶ 43 Without more evidence beyond Brack’s beliefs about LexisNexis’s practices and policies, a material question of fact remains—whether the company sells unredacted reports to its customers.
¶ 44 The majority contends Mancini does not direct the court’s attention to any facts in the record to contradict Brack’s testimony, or that would call into question that SPD provides unredacted accident reports to LexisNexis to comply with its reporting obligations. Not so. As the majority notes, Michael Camarata, an attorney at Mancini’s office, submitted an affidavit asserting he purchased an unredacted version of one of SPD’s accident reports from LexisNexis. The majority contends Camarata’s affidavit does not state what information he provided to LexisNexis to purchase the accident report. The majority further notes that Brack testified Camarata would have had to submit the names of the parties involved in the accident, the date and location of the accident, and the accident report number. Yet, as noted, Brack testified as to what she believed
¶ 45 Also, in disclosing unredacted accident reports to LexisNexis without restrictions (as provided in the contract with SPD), SPD fails to protect the privacy of individuals. As the majority says in footnote 2, “the State has a statutory duty to maintain the confidentiality of accident reports in its possession, subject to narrow exceptions.
Cross-Motions for Summary Judgment
¶ 47 Where the parties file cross-motions for summary judgment, they invite the court to decide the issue as a matter of law. Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co. v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Co., 363 Ill.App.3d 335, 339 (2005). Nevertheless, the mere filing of cross-motions does not preclude a determination that triable questions of fact exist. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Coe, 367 Ill. App. 3d 604, 607 (2006). A reviewing court has the power to reverse a summary judgment order, including cross-motions for summary judgment, where the record indicates that a material question of fact exists. Id.
¶ 48 This court has held that the “waiver rule must not be mechanically applied whenever there is disclosure of information but, rather, requires consideration of the circumstances related to the disclosure, including the purpose and extent of the disclosure, as well as the confidentiality
¶ 49 I would reverse the trial court order granting summary judgment for SPD and remand for further proceedings.
Designation as Non-precedential Order
¶ 51 Rule 23(a) allows for publication when a majority of the panel concludes that a decision either “establishes a new rule of law or modifies, explains or criticizes an existing rule of law” or when “the decision resolves, creates, or avoids an apparent conflict of authority within the Appellate Court.”
¶ 52 The majority establishes a new rule of law, satisfying a Rule 23(a) criterion for publication. Under the majority opinion, a government entity, like SPD, that is required to disclose information to the State, can release private information to a third party who sells it, yet deny access to the same information under a FOIA request. Neither the FOIA nor any prior Illinois court has so held, as evidenced by the lack of citations to authority in the majority opinion.
¶ 53 Moreover, the majority does not follow the existing rule of law set forth in Lieber—that “[v]oluntary disclosure in one situation can preclude later claims that records are exempt from release to someone else.” Lieber, 176 Ill. 2d at 413. As noted, the majority attempts to distinguish Lieber by asserting that SPD was mandated to provide accident reports to the State but does not acknowledge SPD’s voluntary act of separately contracting with LexisNexis to allow the company
¶ 54 I propose the Supreme Court consider amending Rules 23(a) in the same way it recently amended Rule 352. See
¶ 55 I have written on this issue before. Ironically, I am forced to rely on an unpublished order to help explain my previous thoughts about unpublished orders. I consider it contrary to the purpose of appellate review that a dissent rejecting the result or rationale can be relegated to precedential oblivion, as I explained in Snow & Ice, Inc. v. MPR Management, Inc., 2017 IL App (1st) 151706-U, ¶¶ 27-53 (Hyman, P.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Whatever persuasive value a dissent may have on future litigants and courts evaporates as an unpublished order.
¶ 56 There are no pragmatic impediments to amending Rule 23(a). Most likely, the presence of a dissent might split the panel on the question of publication. In the First District during 2018, dissents appeared in 15 of 331 opinions (4.5%) and 27 of 1162 Rule 23 orders (2.3%). While sometimes a dissenter prefers that the majority ruling remain unpublished, even if every unpublished order with a dissent had been published, the total number of published opinions would have increased just 8%. I do not perceive this slight number burdening either counsel or the courts when researching the proper disposition of a given argument. Nor would the addition of a few more Rule 23 orders without dissent have much impact on the number of opinions issued, considering that disagreements occur occasionally, although enough to necessitate a Rule change.
¶ 58 On precedent, Lord Mansfield famously observed, “The reason and spirit of cases make law; not the letter of particular precedents.” Fisher v Prince, 3 Burr. 1362, 1364 (1762). But unless issued as a Rule 23(a) opinion, neither the reason nor the spirit of a case makes law in Illinois. At least, the say of a single panel member should be enough to preserve “the reason and spirit of cases.”