The Fourth DCA affirmed the trial court’s second order to produce the requested footage, but it agreed that the Board had properly withheld production under the security plan exemption.iii The Court concluded that the Legislature intended “a court of competent jurisdiction” to apply a common-law approach in determining whether good cause existed, and that the trial court was in the best position to weigh, on a case-by-case basis, the competing needs of disclosure and secrecy of government records. Lastly, the Court, in a separate unanimous opinion, reasoned that the Board’s good faith conduct did not become “unlawful” simply because the Board pursued this unsettled area of law on appeal – the Board was initially required by statute to withhold the footage, and therefore its refusal to turn it over before a judicial finding of “good cause” did not entitle the Media Parties to attorneys’ fees.
Public employers who have been faced with the most challenging of events in this past year finally received a break for following the statutes that they believe governed this terrible incident. One would hope that future courts understand the difficulties public agencies face in balancing the rights of students versus the rights of the press when it comes to the expensive Florida Public Records Act.
Amy Mercer Executive Director
i The full case name is: State Attorney’s Office of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit and School Board of Broward County v. Cable News Network, Inc., Miami Herald Media Company, Sun-Sentinel Company, LLC, ABC, Inc., The Associated Press, The Bradenton Herald, The First Amendment Foundation, Florida Press Association, Gannett Co., Inc., Los Angeles Times Communications, LLC, The New York Times Company, Orlando Sentinel Communications Company, LLC, Broward County Sheriff’s Office, and Scott Israel, in his capacity as Broward County Sheriff. This article shall refer to all appellees as “the Media Par-
ties.” ii The Opinions, not yet released for publication, can be found at: 2018 WL 3569397 (Fla. 4th DCA July 25,
2018) and 2018 WL 3769198 (Fla. 4th DCA August 8, 2018). iii The Court also held that the Media Parties were not entitled to attorneys’ fees from the State Attorney, who had argued that the videos were exempt under the criminal investigation information exemption, because the footage was created before the criminal investigation began, the footage was compiled by the School Board instead of a law enforcement agency, and the State Attorney was never the custodian of the public records at issue, i.e. the video footage.
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