Rosenberg, a partner at Rosenberg Martin Greenberg LLP in Baltimore, said he has not gotten any word on whether the courts will appeal. It’s a bad rule to the extent that it has any meaning at all and there’s no reason for it.” “It’s the right result for everybody, frankly. “We’re all delighted,” attorney Benjamin Rosenberg said Thursday. Pointing out that the judiciary posts explanations on its website of other shorthand codes used in docketing, Fletcher-Hill said there was “no basis asserted to distinguish between that operational policy, practice, or directive and the non-disclosure of the edit table providing a very similar key to identify individual District Court judges.”įletcher-Hill granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs and allowed the AOC 20 days to turn over the record or seek a stay of the order to allow for an appeal. The codes were in use before the Case Search system was created. The codes are used “to efficiently input information about docket events into the mainframe system,” Polly Harding said in the affidavit.
CASE SEARCH MARYLAND JUDICIARY CODE
The director of administrative services for the District Court of Maryland explained in an affidavit that judges joining the District Court bench are assigned a unique three-digit alphanumeric code that is used by clerks who input information into the computer system. He determined the MPIA did not require the request be denied.
The Maryland Rules say the custodian of a record “shall deny inspection” if the record is prepared by or for a judge or other judicial personnel, is purely administrative in nature - but not a local rule, policy or directive - and is not filed with the clerk or required to be.īaltimore City Circuit Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill ruled that the key is “purely administrative” but only because of a policy or directive to use the codes. The request was denied because the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) classified the document as an administrative record. The Abell Foundation filed a Maryland Public Information Act request for the key to assist the group in tracking individual judges’ bail determinations in Baltimore. Judges’ names are not displayed in District Court cases in the database but rather are represented by a three-character code. The Maryland Administrative Office of the Courts must disclose a key to identify District Court judges in the public Case Search database, a Baltimore judge ordered Wednesday.
0 kommentar(er)
