Court: accidental disclosure does not waive privilege.

• Position: FOIA

The California Public Records Act (PRA), which is similar to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, gives its citizens the right to inspect or to force disclosure of government records to the public upon request. There are some limits, including protecting the attorney-client privilege, as one school district learned after accidentally releasing privileged documents in a PRA request.

In Newark Unified Sch. Dist. v. Superior Court, two community organizations requested documents from the Newark (Calif.) Unified School District regarding the school superintendent's resignation. The school district produced the documents, but soon after realized that some of the information contained within them was protected by the attorney-client privilege.

The district asked, and then filed a complaint against, the community organizations to recover the documents, but the organizations refused. The school district, the plaintiff in the case, argued for a temporary restraining order, which was initially denied by the superior court. The defendants, on the other hand, argued that under the PRA, the "disclosure" of a public record constitutes a waiver of applicable exemptions from disclosure.

Ultimately, the San Francisco-based First District Court of Appeal sided with the school district and barred the dissemination of the accidentally produced materials. First, the court ruled, the "waiver" does...