Courts

Cline v. Augusta County and Board of Equalization of Augusta County

Augusta County Circuit Court judge rules that county Board of Equalization violated FOIA by meeting in a small, inaccessible room with a sign on the door directing the public to wait outside until their case was called.

Full text of the opinion (PDF)

Selover v. Warren Department of Social Services

Page General District Court Judge Dale Houff's Feb. 19, 2010, letter ruling on DSS' compliance with order to produce records under FOIA.

Ostergren v. McDonnell (permanent injunction) - federal district court

Federal district court rules that privacy advocate BJ Ostergren may continue to publish the Social Security numbers of prominent persons, but not private ones, to protest current Virginia practices allowing land records with full SSNs to be published online.

McBurney v. Mims (U.S. federal district court)

U.S. District Court grants Attorney General's motion to dismiss in case challenging Virginia FOIA's restriction of its use to Virginia citizens only (i.e., a North Carolina resident has no right to file a request to receive records from Virginia state or local government).

McBurney v. Mims - briefs

Please visit our Brief Bank to view some of the briefs filed by the plaintiffs in McBurney v. Mims, which challenges the provision in Virginia FOIA that says FOIA can be used by Virginia citizens only, not out-of-state residents.

Perreault v. The Free Lance-Star (Va. Supreme Court)

The settlement terms of several wrongful death lawsuits brought in Spotsylvania County against a pharmaceutical company must be disclosed publicly and cannot be sealed in the court records, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled. The unanimous opinion upholds a circuit court ruling that it was improper to permit the suits to be settled without the details disclosed in court.

Ostergren v. McDonnell (federal district court)

Virginia law barring people from posting Social Security numbers on the Internet is unconstitutional as applied to a privacy advocate's Web site as it existed at the time of the lawsuit.

Giarratano v. Johson (4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals)

Virginia Freedom of Information Act's prohibition on prisoner use for records not related to their court cases is constitutionally sound.

Rivera v. Long (Virginia Supreme Court)

Where the Social Security numbers are redacted from voter registration application records, the documents will no longer be exempt from inspection.

Davis v. City of Chesapeake (Chesapeake Circuit Court)

The Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act is not an exemption to FOIA's disclosure requirements. City may not charge for summary/abstract of record without first reaching an agreeement with the requester.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Courts