Black Panther Party v. Kehoe

• Decision Date: 24 October 1974
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: The BLACK PANTHER PARTY et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. John KEHOE et al., Defendants and Respondents. Civ. 13961.

Page 106

117 Cal.Rptr. 106

42 Cal.App.3d 645

The BLACK PANTHER PARTY et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. John KEHOE et al., Defendants and Respondents.

Civ. 13961.

Court of Appeal, Third District, California.

Oct. 24, 1974.

[42 Cal.App.3d 648] Fred J. Hiestand, JoAnn Chandler, Sidney M. Wolinsky, Public Advocates, Inc., San Francisco, for plaintiffs and appellants.

Evelle J. Younger, Atty. Gen. by Anthony S. DaVigo and William Goode, Deputy Attys. Gen., Sacramento, for defendants and respondents.

OPINION ON REHEARING

FRIEDMAN, Acting Presiding Justice.

Plaintiffs are the Black Panther Party and the California Legislative Council for Older Americans, both unincorporated associations. Defendants are the Director of the State Department of Consumer Affairs and the Chief of the Bureau of Collection and Investigative Services. Plaintiffs seek judicial enforcement of their demand for inspection of letters of complaint from individuals, charging unethical or abusive practices by licensed collection agencies. The trial court held these complaints exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act (Gov.Code, § 6250 et seq.) and denied relief. Plaintiffs appeal.

Within the Department of Consumer Affairs are a number of agencies which license and regulate a wide variety of professions and businesses. (See Bus. & Prof.Code, § 101.) One of these agencies is the Bureau of Collection and Investigative Services, which licenses collection agencies. Several statutes deal with citizen complaints which charge licensees with wrongdoing. After receiving a complaint each licensing agency within the department must keep the complainant informed of its action; if appropriate, it may notify the licensee and meet and confer with the licensee and complainant in order to mediate the complaint; the Director of Consumer Affairs is also charged with receiving 'complaints from consumers'; upon receipt of a complaint the director may notify the licensee and request relief for the consumer; or he may transmit the complaint to an appropriate enforcement or regulatory agency. (Bus. & Prof.Code, §§ 129, 325, 326; see fn. 10, infra.) The director must make an annual report to the Governor and Legislature, showing the number and disposition of consumer complaints. (Bus. & Prof.Code, § 327.) With specific regard to licensed collection agencies, any person aggrieved by a collection agency's action may file a written complaint with the bureau chief, who must refer 'all such statements . . . for investigation and report; . . ..' The chief may also initiate investigations of licensees on his own motion. (Bus. & Prof.Code, § 6925.)

Plaintiffs allege that their membership are primarily people of low income who are vulnerable to oppressive activities on the part of some collective agencies; ¹ that the Black Panther Party publishes a weekly newspaper to inform the community of matters of common interest. Plaintiffs contend that written complaints against collection agencies in the files of the department or bureau are public records, made available for inspection by the California Public Records Act, which consists of Government Code sections 6250 through 6260. ²

I

Pertinent provisions of the California Public Records Act include a statement of statutory policy in Government Code section 6250; the declaration of a general right of public inspection of public records in section 6253, subdivision (a); a list of 14 kinds of disclosure-exempt records, concluding with a provision for permissive disclosure of these, in section 6254; a specific reference in subdivision (f) of that section to 'records of complaints' as one of the exempt varieties; a residual category of confidential records described in section 6255. ³ Additionally, sections 6256 and 6257 give 'any person' a right to receive a copy of a public record upon payment of a fee. Section 6258 gives 'any person' standing to institute judicial proceedings to enforce the right to inspect or receive a copy of a public record.

Plaintiffs' demand is limited to complaints regarding collection agencies, but the disclosure problem raised by the lawsuit extends to consumer complaints in the files of licensing agencies generally. The trial court construed section 6254, subdivision (f) (fn. 3, supra) to exempt these complaints from disclosure. The provision is ambiguous and requires interpretation. It contains two separate clauses describing disclosure-exempt papers, but each clause is characterized by variant language:

(a) The first clause exempts 'records of complaints to or investigations conducted by, or records of intelligence information or security procedures of' the Attorney General (who is head of the state Department of Justice) or by police agencies.

(b) The second clause exempts 'any such investigatory or security files' compiled by other public agencies for correctional, law enforcement or licensing purposes.

The present case pivots on the second of these clauses. Just as the first clause exempts the investigatory files of police agencies, so the second clause exempts investigatory files of licensing agencies. The first clause expressly exempts 'records of complaints,' but the second clause does not. A letter of complaint may or may not have enough substance to warrant investigation of the licensee. A document does not gain exempt status as part of an investigatory file until there is some concrete prospect of an investigation. (Uribe v. Howie (1971) 19 Cal.App.3d 194, 212--213, 96 Cal.Rptr. 493.) Thus a written complaint is not Per se part of an investigatory file. As the California statute is drawn, nondisclosure of a written complaint requires special statutory authority. (Cf. Evans v. Department of Transportation of United States (5 Cir. 1971) 446 F.2d 821.)

Arguably, this authority comes from the specification in the second clause of 'any such' investigatory files. To all appearances, the quoted phrase refers to a described antecedent, its purpose being the avoidance of unnecessary repetition of the preceding description. The words 'any such' would be surplusage did they not embrace the same records as the preceding clause. Had the draftsman meant to exclude 'records of complaints' from the second clause, he need only have exempted investigatory files without inserting the phrase 'any such.' A statute should be construed to give force to all its words and to avoid surplusage. (People v. Gilbert (1969) 1 Cal.3d 475, 480, 82 Cal.Rptr. 724, 462 P.2d 580.) The phrase 'any such investigatory or security files' in the second clause of subdivision (f) was apparently designed as a condensed description of all the records described in the first clause, including records of complaints.

II

Textual analysis is not enough. Statutory ambiguities should be resolved to promote the legislative objective exhibited by the entire enactment. (See Merrill v. Department of Motor Vehicles (1969) 71 Cal.2d 907, 918, 80 Cal.Rptr. 89, 458 P.2d 33; Ingram v. Justice Court (1968) 69 Cal.2d 832, 839, 73 Cal.Rptr. 410, 447 P.2d 650.)

Government files hold massive collections which are roughly divisible into public business and private revelations. Statutory and decisional law on public record disclosure reveals two fundamental if somewhat competing societal concerns--prevention of secrecy in government and protection of individual privacy. 'The people's right to know' is a rubric which often accompanies disclosure claims. The 'right to know' demands public exposure of recorded official action. A narrower but important interest is the privacy of individuals whose personal affairs are recorded in government files. Societal concern for privacy focuses on minimum exposure of personal information collected for governmental purposes. The California courts have equated the right of privacy with the right 'to be let alone,' which must be balanced against public interest in the dissemination of information demanded by democratic processes. ⁴

The California Public Records Act was apparently modeled after the 1966 federal statute known as the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. § 552), although with selected differences. These disclosure statutes form an area of confluence for the conflicting demands of public exposure and personal privacy. Statutory formulae often fail to resolve the conflict. The 'right to know' which affects records documenting the activities of public officials applies with less force to reports and returns of personal data supplied by private citizens. The latter too may fall within the spotlight of disclosure needs. Although personal information which private persons supply to government may not itself reveal official action, it may have sharp relevance to inquiries into official conduct. ⁵

In section 6250 (fn. 3, supra) the California Public Records Act bespeaks legislative concern for individual privacy as well as disclosure 'concerning the conduct of the people's business.' The same dual concern appears throughout the act. Subdivision (f) of section 6254 is one of 14 subdivisions of that section, all describing exemptions from the general disclosure requirement. In large part, these exemptions are designed to protect the privacy of persons whose data or documents come into governmental possession. For example, subdivision (c) exempts personnel and medical files 'the disclosure of which would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.' Subdivision (d) protects financial information supplied under legislation regulating financial institutions and securities sales. Subdivision (e) protects such matters as plant production data, market and crop reports 'which are obtained in confidence from any person.'

The objectives of the Public Records Act thus include preservation of islands of privacy upon the broad seas of enforced disclosure. Recognition of privacy as a distinct statutory goal fully confirms our textual interpretation of section 6254, subdivision (f). Both...