Town Crier, Inc. v. Chief of Police of Weston

• Decision Date: 27 April 1972
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
• Parties: TOWN CRIER, INC., et al. v. CHIEF OF POLICE OF WESTON.

Page 379

282 N.E.2d 379

361 Mass. 682

TOWN CRIER, INC., et al. v. CHIEF OF POLICE OF WESTON.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

Argued March 7, 1972.

Decided April 27, 1972.

Richard W. Renehan, Boston (Ira C. Lupu, Boston, with him), for petitioners.

Florence E. Freeman, Town Counsel, for respondent.

John B. Jenney and Francis E. Jenney, Waltham, for The Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Assn., amicus curiae, submitted a brief.

Before TAURO, C.J., and CUTTER, SPIEGEL, REARDON and HENNESSEY, JJ.

TAURO, Chief Justice.

The petitioners seek a writ of mandamus ordering the respondent chief of police and custodian of police records in the town of Weston to make available for their examination an arrest register and daily log maintained by the Weston police department. The petitioners are Town Crier, Inc., a corporation publishing a weekly newspaper with circulation in Weston, and Thomas F. Sleeper, the editor of the newspaper. The case has been reported without decision by a justice of the Superior Court upon a statement of agreed facts. G.L. c. 231, § 111.

The petitioners argue that the respondent's refusal to make the arrest register and daily log available to them is a violation of his statutory duty to permit any person, at reasonable times and under proper supervision, to inspect and examine public records in the respondent's custody. G.L. c. 66, § 10, as amended through St. 1948, c. 550, § 5. ¹ The petitioners' contention raises the sole issue whether the arrest register and daily log are public records under the laws of this Commonwealth. The petitioners do not contend that they have greater rights than the public in the examination of the police records.

From the record the following facts appear: The petitioners made demand upon the respondent on June 18, 1971, and again by letter dated July 15, 1971, for an opportunity to examine his department's arrest register and daily log. The respondent has refused to comply with the petitioners' demand. The arrest register is a bound volume which contains information on each person arrested by the Weston police, including his name, address, date and place of birth, the nature of the offence charged, its disposition, and the identity of the officers involved. The daily log consists of sheets in a loose-leaf binder. Entries regularly made on the sheets concern the investigation and arrest of suspects (both juvenile and adult), reports and complaints received from all sources, and the identity of the officers receiving and responding to reports. ² The Weston police department has maintained the arrest register and daily log for at least twelve years as an aid to internal communication and for the assistance of department supervisory personnel. There is evidently no town by-law which requires that these records be kept. Pertinent information contained in the records is used to prepare, inter alia, a monthly statistical report of police activity to the town selectmen and a monthly statistical report under G.L. c. 124, § 9, of the number of persons arrested, by sex and class of offence, to the Commissioner of Corrections. The report to the selectmen is made available to the public.

The petitioners' claim of a right of public access to the police records is based on their interpretation of the statutory definition of public records. G.L. c. 4, § 7, Twenty-sixth, as amended through St.1969, c. 831, § 2. ³ They contend that the statute applies to all town records actually made and not merely to those containing entries required by law but that, in any event, the police records involved in this case fall within the second category. Each contention is without merit.

With reference to the first contention, the critical language in G.L. c. 4, § 7, provides as follows: 'In construing statutes the following words shall have the meanings herein given, unless a contrary intention clearly appears: . . . Twenty-sixth, 'Public records' shall mean any written or printed book or paper . . . of any . . . town . . . in or on which any entry has been made or is required to be made by law' (emphasis supplied). As the petitioners interpret the statute, the term 'public records' encompasses two categories of books and papers: 'namely, (a) those in which entries have been made, and (b) those in which the law requires entries to be made.' The petitioners achieve this construction by applying the words 'by law' in the definition to the second verb phrase, 'is required to be made,' but not to the first verb phrase, 'has been made.' Under the statute so construed, the arrest register and daily log fit within the definition since both are "books' containing written entries.'

If we adopted the petitioners' interpretation, governmental records of every nature and description would be subject to public scrutiny. A consideration of the legislative history of the statutory definition of public records refutes this interpretation.

The first statute defining the term 'public records' applied to 'any written or printed book or paper . . . of any . . . town, in or on which any record or entry has been or is to be made in pursuance of any requirement of law' (emphasis supplied). St.1897, c. 439, § 1. As the petitioners themselves acknowledge, the original statute '(q)uite clearly . . . applied only to entries made pursuant to a requirement of law.' The present phraseology was adopted in 1902 when the statute was codified as R.L. c. 35, § 5. In the report of the commissioners who prepared the revision there is nothing to indicate that any change in meaning was intended. See Report of the Commissioners for Consolidating and Arranging the Public Statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1901), Vol. 1, 392--395. ⁴ The general rule is that 'verbal changes in the revision of a statute do not alter its meaning and are construed as a continuation of pre-existing law in the absence of some accompanying report of revisers or other indication showing an express purpose to change the substance of the law.' Derinza's Case, 229 Mass. 435, 442, 118 N.E. 942, 946. See Main v. County of Plymouth, 223 Mass. 66, 69, 111 N.E. 694, and cases cited; Ollila v. Huikari, 237 Mass. 54, 56, 129 N.E. 395; Mackintosh, petitioner, 246 Mass. 482, 484, 141 N.E. 496; Longyear v. Commissioner of Corps. & Taxn., 265 Mass. 585, 588, 164 N.E. 459; Neiss v. Burwen, 287 Mass. 82, 96, 191 N.E. 654, 660. ⁵ While changes in wording in a revision 'may be so violent as to take them out of the general rule . . .' (see Great Barrington v. Gibbons, 199 Mass. 527, 529, 85 N.E. 737, and cases cited; Commonwealth v. New York Cent. & Hudson River R.R., 206 Mass. 417, 419, 92 N.E. 766), '(t)he present case falls within the general rule.' Neiss v. Burwen, supra. The current statutory definition which follows the 1902 revision, although less explicit in language than the first statutory definition, incorporates the provision of the original enactment that, for a book or paper containing written entries to be a public record, the entries must have been made pursuant to a requirement of law. ⁶

The petitioners assert that any construction other than that which they propose would do 'violence to the language of the . . . (statute)' because 'the phrase 'has been made' . . . (would be) rendered nugatory.' We disagree. The proper construction of G.L. c. 4, § 7, Twenty-sixth, in our view is that the two categories of records emcompassed by the definitions are (a) those in which 'any entry has been made . . . (pursuant to a legal requirement)' and (b) those in which 'any entry . . . is required to be made by law,' even though such entry may not in fact have been made as required. This construction preserves the clear legislative intention of the original statute (St.1897, c. 439, § 1), yet it accords with the familiar axiom of statutory interpretation that a statute should be construed so as to give meaning to all its language. Commonwealth v. Woods Hole, Martha's Vineyard & Nantucket S. S. Authy., 352 Mass. 617, 618, 227 N.E.2d 357, and cases cited. Furthermore, when G.L. c. 4, § 7, Twenty-sixth, was most recently amended, the Legislature in the same act inserted in the public records chapter, G.L. c. 66, a new section, § 17B, creating eight new classes of records open to public inspection. See St.1969, c. 831. ⁷ We have said that statutes concerning the same subject matter should 'be interpreted so as to give each '. . . a rational and workable effect . . . to the end that there may be a harmonious and consistent body of legislation. '' Boston v. Chelsea, 343 Mass. 499, 501, 179 N.E.2d 596, 598, citing Smith v. Director of Civil Serv., 324 Mass. 455, 458, 87 N.E.2d 196, and School Committee of Gloucester v. Gloucester, 324 Mass. 209, 212, 85 N.E.2d 429. If c. 4, § 7, Twenty-sixth, and the new § 17B of c. 66 are considered together, they confirm our conclusion that the former provision applies only to records with entries required by law. Were its coverage broader, encompassing all governmental records, there would have been no need for the portion of the new section that gives the public access to certain records which do not meet the 'legal requirement' test but nonetheless are governmental records. See G.L. c. 66, § 17B, part. 1, (c)--(f), (h). For these reasons, we are convinced that, while the Legislature has liberalized access to governmental records since the enactment of the first statute defining 'public records,' ⁸ it has at no time broadened the statutory definition to cover, in effect, all records kept by public officials, regardless of whether they contain entries made pursuant to a requirement of law. Any further extension of the definition to additional classes of governmental records is clearly a legislative function.

We turn to the petitioners' alternative theory that, in any event, the arrest register and daily log meet the 'legal requirement' test because they are used to compile monthly statistical...