Capital Newspapers, Div. of Hearst Corp. v. Whalen
| Decision Date | 19 February 1987 |
| Citation | 513 N.Y.S.2d 367,505 N.E.2d 932,69 N.Y.2d 246 |
| Parties | , 505 N.E.2d 932, 13 Media L. Rep. 2245 In the Matter of CAPITAL NEWSPAPERS, Division of the Hearst Corporation, Appellant, v. Thomas M. WHALEN, III, as Mayor of the City of Albany, et al., Respondents. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Page 367
Media L. Rep. 2245
Corporation, Appellant,
v.
Thomas M. WHALEN, III, as Mayor of the City of Albany, et
al., Respondents.
Page 368
Peter L. Danziger, Thomas F. Gleason and Mary O. Donohue, Albany, for appellant.
Vincent J. McArdle, Jr., Corp. Counsel (W. Dennis Duggan, Albany, of counsel), for respondents.
HANCOCK, Judge.
We hold that under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) (Public Officers Law art. 6) personal or unofficial documents which are intermingled with official government files and are being "kept" or "held" by a governmental entity are "records" maintained by an "agency" under Public Officers Law § 86(3), (4). Such records are, therefore, subject to disclosure under FOIL absent a specific statutory exemption.
The term "record" for purposes of FOIL is broadly defined and includes "any information kept, held, filed, produced or reproduced by, with or for an agency * * * in any physical form whatsoever" (Public Officers Law § 86[4] ). 1 The definition of "agency" is equally inclusive, encompassing "any * * * public corporation * * * or other governmental entity" (Public Officers Law § 86[3] ). 2
At issue in this appeal by petitioner's newspaper is whether two categories of documents in custody of respondent City of Albany should be held to be "records" under FOIL: correspondence of a former Mayor of Albany, the late Erastus Corning, II, concerning matters of a personal nature and correspondence concerning the activities of the Albany County Democratic Committee. The narrow question of statutory construction presented arises from respondents' contention that although these papers are literally within the FOIL definitions as "record[s]" being "kept" or "held" by an "agency" (the City of Albany), they are, nonetheless, outside of the scope of FOIL because of the private nature of their contents. For reasons to be discussed, we disagree with respondents' contention and conclude that there should be a reversal.
Erastus Corning, II, was the Mayor of Albany from 1942 until his death in 1983. During his tenure, Mayor Corning collected and stored more than 900,000 pages of documents (the Corning papers) at his office in City Hall. Included among the documents were letters and documents pertaining to Corning's personal affairs and to
Page 369
his activities as Albany County Democratic Committee Chairman.Following Mayor Corning's death, some of his personal correspondence was turned over to his family. The rest of the documents were listed by title, given index numbers, packed in over 300 cartons and either stored "at Albany City Hall or transferred to the City and County Hall of Records". On August 27, 1984, a reporter for petitioner's Albany evening newspaper, The Knickerbocker News, was granted access to the Corning papers by respondent Thomas M. Whalen, III, Corning's successor as Mayor of Albany. The reporter copied several documents which became the subject of news stories and in some cases appeared verbatim in The Knickerbocker News. Subsequently, respondents advised petitioner that further access would be denied until they had reviewed the Corning papers and removed the personal documents--which, in their opinion, were not covered by FOIL--and such other documents as were within one of FOIL's specific exemptions. Respondents stated that access to Corning's personal letters and to correspondence relating to his Albany County Democrat Committee activities was being denied, not because of any claimed FOIL exemption but solely because those...
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