June 11, 2012

Ms. Cherl K. Byles

Assistant City Attorney

City of Fort Worth

1000 Throckmorton Street

Fort Worth, Texas 76102

OR2012-08924

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# 460189 (W016872).

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

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 doctrine of common-law privacy. Common-law privacy protects information if (1) the information contains highly intimate or embarrassing facts, the publication of which would be highly objectionable to a reasonable person, and (2) the information is not of legitimate concern to the public. Indus. Found. v. Tex. Indus. Accident Bd., 540 S.W.2d 668, 685 (Tex. 1976). The type of information considered intimate or 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. Generally, only highly intimate information that implicates the privacy of an individual is withheld. However, in certain instances, where it is demonstrated 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.

You seek to withhold the submitted report in its entirety from the requestor under section 552.101 in conjunction with common-law privacy. In this instance, the requestor is the individual whose privacy rights would be implicated. Section 552.023 provides that "[a] person . . . has a special right of access, beyond the right of the general public, to information held by a governmental body that relates to the person and that is protected from public disclosure by laws intended to protect that person's privacy interests." Gov't Code § 552.023(a); see also Open Records Decision No. 481 at 4 (1987) (privacy theories not implicated when individual requests information concerning himself). Thus, the requestor has a right of access to her own private information pursuant to section 552.023 of the Government Code, and the city may not withhold any of the submitted information from this requestor under section 552.101 of the Government Code in conjunction with common-law privacy. As you raise no other exceptions against disclosure of the submitted information, it must be released to this requestor. ⁽¹⁾

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,

Ana Carolina Vieira

Assistant Attorney General

Open Records Division

ACV/ag

Ref: ID# 460189

Enc. Submitted documents

c: Requestor

(w/o enclosures)

Footnotes

1. Because the requestor has a special right of access to the information being released, the city must again seek a decision from this office if it receives another request for the same information from another requestor.

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