Annotations for Decision

General Assembly did not intend to mandate an iron rule of non-disclosure whenever an exemption contained in the Kentucky Open Records Act applies because such a rule would run counter to the principle, fundamental in the law, that rights, even fundamental rights, may be waived, and the Act’s express policy, is the free and open examination of public records. Lawson v. Office of the AG, 415 S.W.3d 59, 2013 Ky. LEXIS 640 (Ky. 2013). Full Details

General Assembly mandated the non-disclosure of exempt records, a mandate the person or entity whose interest the exemption protects may seek to enforce in the circuit court; disclosure of an exempt record is not precluded if the intended beneficiaries waive their right to non-disclosure, and the statutory mandate that prosecutorial files be and remain totally exempt accords the prosecutor an unlimited discretion to deny disclosure, but it does not preclude him or her from allowing it. Lawson v. Office of the AG, 415 S.W.3d 59, 2013 Ky. LEXIS 640 (Ky. 2013). Full Details

It was proper to refuse to enjoin the Attorney General from disclosing a statement an owner gave because the breach of Transportation Cabinet contracting regulations and the Attorney General’s response remained matters of sufficient public interest to warrant an invasion of the owner’s limited interest in keeping his account under wraps; the possibility of a limited amount of purely personal information does not justify the blanket non-disclosure of a record with substantial public import. Lawson v. Office of the AG, 415 S.W.3d 59, 2013 Ky. LEXIS 640 (Ky. 2013). Full Details

Owner of a company did not have standing to invoke the exemption contained in subsection (1)(h), because he was not among the class of persons that exemption was intended to protect; the exemption is addressed to county and Commonwealth attorneys, not private citizens, and is intended to shield prosecutors from disclosures potentially harmful to their informants or their prosecutions and from the cost, inconvenience, and disruption that compliance would visit upon their offices. Lawson v. Office of the AG, 415 S.W.3d 59, 2013 Ky. LEXIS 640 (Ky. 2013). Full Details

Standing to assert the exemptions of the Kentucky Open Records Act is limited to those persons or entities the particular exemption was meant to protect; the privacy exemption was clearly intended to protect individuals from unwarranted disclosures of personal information lodged, for whatever reason, in the government’s files. Lawson v. Office of the AG, 415 S.W.3d 59, 2013 Ky. LEXIS 640 (Ky. 2013). Full Details

While the interests reckoned on the privacy side of the balance generally do not dissipate, and in some instances even grow stronger, with the passage of time, it is no less true that the public’s interest in knowing what the government is up to includes a strong historical interest in knowing what the government was up to; the passage of time, therefore, while a factor relevant to the balancing of interests required by the privacy exemption, will seldom be dispositive in-and-of itself. Lawson v. Office of the AG, 415 S.W.3d 59, 2013 Ky. LEXIS 640 (Ky. 2013). Full Details