PUBLISHED OPINION
Case No.: 95-2557
†Petition for
review filed
Complete
Title
of
Case:JAMES MUNROE,
Petitioner-Respondent,
v.
PATRICK D. BRAATZ,
Respondent-Appellant.†
Submitted
on Briefs: March 11, 1996
COURT COURT OF
APPEALS OF WISCONSIN
Opinion
Released: March 28, 1996
Source
of APPEAL Appeal from an order
Full
Name JUDGE COURT: Circuit
Lower
Court. COUNTY: Dane
(If
"Special" JUDGE: Moria
Krueger
so
indicate)
JUDGES: Eich,
C.J., Gartzke, P.J., Sundby, J.
Concurred:
Dissented:
Appellant
ATTORNEYSFor the respondent-appellant the
cause was submitted on the briefs of James E. Doyle, attorney general,
with Alan Lee, assistant attorney general.
Respondent
ATTORNEYSFor the petitioner-respondent the
cause was submitted on the brief of James Munroe, pro se, of Green Bay.
COURT OF
APPEALS DECISION DATED AND
RELEASED March
28, 1996 |
NOTICE |
A party may file with the Supreme Court a petition to review an
adverse decision by the Court of Appeals.
See § 808.10 and Rule
809.62, Stats. |
This opinion is subject to further editing. If published, the official version will appear in the bound
volume of the Official Reports. |
No. 95-2557
STATE OF WISCONSIN IN
COURT OF APPEALS
JAMES
MUNROE,
Petitioner-Respondent,
v.
PATRICK
D. BRAATZ,
Respondent-Appellant.
APPEAL
from an order of the circuit court for Dane County: MORIA KRUEGER, Judge. Affirmed.
Before
Eich, C.J., Gartzke, P.J., and Sundby, J.
EICH,
C.J. The State of Wisconsin appeals
from an order issuing a writ of mandamus to Patrick Braatz, Administrator of
the Division of Health Professions and Services Licensing for the Wisconsin
Department of Regulation and Licensing, requiring him to release to the
petitioner-respondent, James Munroe, certain records relating to a physician
licensed by the department.
The
issue is whether Braatz's reasons for withholding the information are
sufficient to outweigh the strong public policy favoring disclosure of records
kept by public agencies as declared in the public records law, §§ 19.31-19.36, Stats., and the many cases decided
thereunder. We conclude that the trial
court correctly ruled that the public interest in disclosing the records
outweighs the public interest in maintaining their confidentiality, and we
therefore affirm the order.
Munroe
requested that the department provide him with the scores recorded on tests
administered by the department to a physician, Dr. Severino G. Gomilla, in the
years 1992, 1993 and 1994. Braatz, the
custodian of the sought-after records, denied the request, setting forth the
following reasons for the denial:
I have
reviewed your request and find that access to the examination scores of Dr.
Gomilla should be restricted. The
actual and potential harm in releasing these scores substantially outweighs the
benefits to the public interest if they were made available. The release of individual test scores
presents a substantial likelihood that the scores will be used inappropriately in
the distribution of medical services to the public. This would occur by patients attempting to use the scores as a
basis for selecting a physician.
A passing score on
a medical registration examination is evidence that the applicant possesses
minimum competency to practice the profession.
The examination is valid for that purpose only. The examination has not been designed to be
used as a selection criteri[on] by the public for medical services or by
employers who hire physicians. To
otherwise use the test scores would likely result in harm to the general public
seeking medical services were they to rely on the score as evidence of the
relative skills and ability required for a particular medical position.
Munroe
petitioned the circuit court for a writ of mandamus directing Braatz to comply
with his request. An alternative writ
was issued and the department made its return, moving at the same time to quash
the writ. After a hearing, the trial
court concluded that the public interest in keeping Dr. Gomilla's test scores
confidential, as expressed in Braatz's letter, was outweighed by the public
interest in disclosure, and ordered that the writ of mandamus issue.
In
enacting the public records law, the legislature mandated a "presumption
of complete public access" to the records of public agencies. See Journal/Sentinel, Inc. v.
School Bd. of the Sch. Dist. of Shorewood, 186 Wis.2d 443, 449, 521 N.W.2d
165, 168 (Ct. App. 1994). And while the
law recognizes that there may be circumstances where the conduct of public
business requires that public access to certain records be denied or
restricted, it stands for the proposition that "[t]he denial of public
access generally is contrary to the public interest, and only in an exceptional
case may access be denied."
Section 19.31, Stats.
When
a requester asks to inspect public records, the custodian of those records must
balance the public's right of inspection under the law against the public
interest in nondisclosure. If the
request is to be denied, the custodian must do so in writing, stating the
specific public policy reasons for the refusal. Village of Butler v. Cohen, 163 Wis.2d 819, 825,
472 N.W.2d 579, 581 (Ct. App. 1991).
When
the custodian denies access and that denial is challenged in court, the first
question is whether the custodian's denial was "made with the requisite
specificity"--that is, whether it is sufficiently specific to provide a
basis for judicial review. Butler,
163 Wis.2d at 825-26, 472 N.W.2d at 581-82.
If it is, the court next examines the stated reasons for the denial to
determine whether they are sufficient to outweigh the strong public policy
favoring disclosure. Id.
at 826, 472 N.W.2d at 582. It is a
"balancing test," and a refusal to disclose the requested information
will be upheld only when the custodian's stated reasons are so strong as to
"`satisfy the court that the public-policy presumption [favoring] disclosure
is outweighed by even more important public-policy considerations'"
warranting nondisclosure. Estates
of Zimmer, 151 Wis.2d 122, 132, 442 N.W.2d 578, 583 (Ct. App. 1989)
(quoted source omitted). There is, in
short, "`an absolute right to inspect a public document in the absence of specifically
stated sufficient reasons to the contrary.'" Id. (emphasis in the original).
Appellate
review of the trial court's decision is de novo: we independently examine the
sufficiency of the custodian's reasons. Rathie v. Northeastern Wis.
Technical Inst., 142 Wis.2d 685, 687, 419 N.W.2d 296, 298 (Ct. App.
1987). We have often recognized,
however, that even on a de novo review, "[w]e may benefit ... from the
analys[i]s of the circuit court ...."
State v. Eison, 194 Wis.2d 160, 178, 533 N.W.2d 738, 745
(1995).[1]
The
department argues first that we should conclude that its decision to withhold
the information passes the balancing test because that decision is consistent
with "sound public policy" as expressed in other sections of the
statutes. The department refers us to
statutes permitting agencies to close an otherwise open public meeting for the
purpose of considering matters relating to the licensing of professionals,
§ 19.85(1)(b), Stats., or to
financial, medical, social or personal histories or "disciplinary
data" of specific individuals which, "if discussed in public, would
be likely to have a substantial adverse effect upon the [person's]
reputation," § 19.85(1)(f), and it maintains that permitting disclosure of
the test scores in this case would have a similar "adverse [e]ffect"
on Dr. Gomilla. As we have stressed
above, our review must be based on the reasons stated by the custodian for
denying access to the records, and Braatz's letter rejecting Munroe's request
does not attempt to justify withholding the records for any such reason.
The
department next analogizes the situation presented in this case to "pupil
records" kept by schools, and with records of examination scores, rankings
and other evaluations of applicants for state civil service positions--all of
which are expressly declared to be confidential under §§ 118.125 and 230.13, Stats.--and it argues that it would be
"anomalous" to conclude that the same legislature that enacted those
statutes could have also intended, in passing the public records law, that
state licensing board examination scores were subject to release.
We
disagree. The public records law does
not displace other provisions of the statutes providing for confidentiality of
particular records. Indeed, the basic
access provisions of the law are expressly conditioned on the absence of other
laws to the contrary,[2]
and it is for the legislature, not this court, to create additional exceptions
or exemptions to the public records law.[3] Had the legislature desired to create an
exception for Department of Regulation and Licensing test scores, as it has in
the statutes to which the department refers (and several others), it could have
done so. It did not, and given the
strength of Wisconsin's open records policy--one of the strongest declarations
of policy to be found anywhere in the statutes[4]--we
decline to usurp the legislative prerogative and write still another exception
into the law.
Finally,
we reject the department's argument that the reasons stated in the Braatz
letter are themselves so imbued with the public interest that they must be held
to supersede the public's interest, as expressed in the public records law,
requiring us to reverse the trial court's order.
We
have discussed in some detail the strength of the public policy underlying the
disclosure requirements of the open records law, and we do not believe that
policy is overcome by the department's assertions of the public interest
involved in preventing people from coming to "mistaken judgments"
about physicians as a result of having access to their scores on examinations
administered by a government regulatory agency. The department denied Munroe's request for one basic reason: the
examination does not test the "relative skills" of those taking it
and thus is not a valid criterion for use by the public in selecting or hiring
a physician. The trial court correctly
noted that, if that is the primary public interest at stake, it could be
achieved by attaching a simple caveat to the released document indicating that
such scores, by themselves, may not be an accurate means by which to evaluate
the competence of the physician--much as a stock prospectus contains warnings
that past performance of a security may not be a valid indicator of future
profits.
We
are satisfied that the reasons advanced by the department for denying the
public access to the sought-after records do not raise public policy
considerations sufficient to overcome the public interest in disclosing
them. We therefore affirm the trial
court's order.
By
the Court.—Order affirmed.
[1] In ruling Braatz's reasons for withholding
the test scores insufficient, the trial court said:
While I understand
that public licensure is clearly within the public domain, I'm not persuaded
that as it stands now, the release of test scores is not. I find the statement by Mr. Braatz to be
quite paternalistic and somewhat patronizing.
If a member of the general public wants to have the test scores as part
of the information that a person seeking medical treatment would rely upon in
determining whether that person wants treatment from a particular physician, I
don't know that there is any basis to deny that. Of course, if anyone relies solely on one factor, one may be in
error, but for an administrator to make the decision that just in case they
would use only that as the basis for the decision-making we can't release that
I don't believe is a decision within the administrator's power.
... [I]f the only
public interest is that people might make mistaken judgments if they rely
solely on those scores, the scores could be released with a caveat to whoever
receives them that this is not necessarily indicative of the physician's actual
performance skills or ability to treat whatever problem the person may be
seeking to be addressed by the physician rather than overriding the presumption
of release ....
[2] The basic "access" statute,
§ 19.35(1), Stats., begins:
"Except as otherwise provided by law, any requester has a right to
inspect any record." (Emphasis
added.)
[3] We noted in George v. Knick,
188 Wis.2d 594, 598, 525 N.W.2d 143, 145 (Ct. App. 1994), that in addition to
the legislature, the supreme court, in the exercise of its common-law declaring
power, has "developed exceptions to the general rule of disclosure"
over the years. Just as we would not
assume the legislative law-making power, neither would we assume the supreme
court's law-declaring authority in order to create an exception to the public
records law for the documents sought in this case. See State v. Schumacher, 144 Wis.2d 388,
404-05, 424 N.W.2d 672, 678 (1988) (law-declaring and law-developing function
rests primarily in the supreme court).
[4] Section 19.31, Stats., recognizes that all persons are entitled to "the
greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the
official acts of those officers and employe[e]s who represent them," and
it declares that "providing persons with such information is declared to
be an essential function of a representative government ...." The section concludes:
To that end [the public records law] shall be construed
in every instance with a presumption of complete public access, consistent with
the conduct of governmental business.
The denial of public access generally is contrary to the public
interest, and only in an exceptional case may access be denied.