February 11, 2011

Ms. J. Middlebrooks

Assistant City Attorney

City of Dallas

1400 South Lamar

Dallas, Texas 75215

OR2011-02136

Dear Ms. Middlebrooks:

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# 408868 (DPD ORR# 2010-10830).

The Dallas Police Department (the "department") received a request for a specified report. You claim that portions of the submitted information are excepted from disclosure under sections 552.101 and 552.130 of the Government Code. We have considered the exceptions you claim and reviewed the submitted representative sample of information. ⁽¹⁾

Section 552.101 of the Government Code excepts from disclosure "information considered to be confidential by law, either constitutional, statutory, or by judicial decision." Gov't Code § 552.101. Section 552.101 encompasses the common-law right of privacy, which protects information if it (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. Indus. Found. v. Tex. Indus. Accident Bd., 540 S.W.2d 668, 685 (Tex. 1976). To demonstrate the applicability of common-law privacy, both prongs of this test must be established. Id. at 681-82. The type of information considered intimate and embarrassing by the Texas Supreme Court in Industrial Foundation included 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. The report at issue contains information that is considered highly intimate or embarrassing and is not of legitimate concern to the public. 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 report reveals the requestor knows the identity of the individual involved as well as the nature of the incidents in the information at issue. Therefore, withholding only the individual's identity or certain details of the incident from this requestor would not preserve the subject individual's common-law right of privacy. Accordingly, to protect the privacy of the individual to whom the information relates, the department must withhold the information at issue in its entirety under section 552.101 of the Government Code in conjunction with common-law privacy. As our ruling is dispositive, we need not address your remaining arguments against disclosure.

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, toll free at (888) 672-6787.

Sincerely,

Lauren E. Kleine

Assistant Attorney General

Open Records Division

LEK/em

Ref: ID# 408868

Enc. Submitted documents

c: Requestor

(w/o enclosures)

Footnotes

1. This letter ruling assumes that the submitted representative sample of information is truly representative of the requested information as a whole. This ruling does not reach, and therefore does not authorize, the withholding of any other requested information to the extent that the other information is substantially different than that submitted to this office. See Gov't Code §§ 552.301(e)(1)(D), .302; Open Records Decision Nos. 499 at 6 (1988), 497 at 4 (1988).

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