January 21, 2009

Ms. Cherl K. Byles

Assistant City Attorney

City of Fort Worth

1000 Throckmorton Street 3^rd Floor

Fort Worth, Texas 76102

OR2009-00845

Dear Ms. Byles:

You ask whether certain information is subject to required public disclosure under the Public Information Act (the "Act"), chapter 552 of the Government Code. Your request was assigned ID# 332524 (PIR O381-09).

The City of Fort Worth (the "city") received a request for a specified police report. You claim that the requested information is excepted from disclosure under section 552.101 of the Government Code. ⁽¹⁾ We have considered the exception you claim and reviewed the information you submitted.

Section 552.101 excepts from disclosure "information considered to be confidential by law, either constitutional, statutory, or by judicial decision." Gov't Code § 552.101. This exception encompasses the doctrine of common-law privacy, which protects information that (1) contains highly intimate or embarrassing facts, the publication of which would be highly objectionable to a reasonable person, and (2) is not of legitimate concern to the public. See Indus. Found. v. Tex. Indus. Accident Bd., 540 S.W.2d 668, 685 (Tex. 1976). The types of information considered to be intimate and embarrassing by the Texas Supreme Court in Industrial Foundation include information relating to sexual assault, pregnancy, mental or physical abuse in the workplace, illegitimate children, psychiatric treatment of mental disorders, attempted suicide, and injuries to sexual organs. Id. at 683. Generally, only highly intimate information that implicates the privacy of an individual is withheld. However, in certain instances where it is demonstrated that the requestor knows the identity of the individual involved as well as the nature of certain incidents, the entire report must be withheld to protect the individual's privacy.

In this instance, the request for information indicates that the requestor knows the identity of the individual involved as well as the nature of the submitted information. Therefore, withholding only the identity of the individual involved or certain details of the incident from the requestor would not preserve the individual's common-law right to privacy. Accordingly, to protect the privacy of the individual to whom the information pertains, the city must withhold all of the submitted information under section 552.101 of the Government Code in conjunction with common-law privacy.

This letter ruling is limited to the particular information at issue in this request and limited to the facts as presented to us; therefore, this ruling must not be relied upon as a previous determination regarding any other information or any other circumstances.

This ruling triggers important deadlines regarding the rights and responsibilities of the governmental body and of the requestor. For more information concerning those rights and responsibilities, please visit our website at http://www.oag.state.tx.us/open/index_orl.php, or call the Office of the Attorney General's Open Government Hotline, toll free, at (877) 673-6839. Questions concerning the allowable charges for providing public information under the Act must be directed to the Cost Rules Administrator of the Office of the Attorney General at (512) 475-2497.

Sincerely,

James W. Morris, III

Assistant Attorney General

Open Records Division

JWM/cc

Ref: ID# 332524

Enc: Submitted documents

c: Requestor

(w/o enclosures)

Footnotes

1. You state that the city has redacted a social security number and Texas motor vehicle record information from the submitted report pursuant to section 552.147(b) of the Government Code and the previous determinations issued to the city under section 552.130 of the Government Code in Open Records Letter Nos. 2006-14726 (2006) and 2007-00198 (2007). See Gov't Code §§ 552.130, .147(b); Open Records Decision No. 673 (2001) (previous determinations).

POST OFFICE BOX 12548, AUSTIN, TEXAS 78711-2548 TEL: (512) 463-2100 WEB: WWW.OAG.STATE.TX.US
An Equal Employment Opportunity Employer