Last week, CJ Griffin filed an OPRA lawsuit on behalf of Richard Rivera against the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office (ECPO) relating to its refusal to disclose the name of a Newark police officer who shot at a fleeing vehicle during a pursuit in January 2019, killing the driver and injuring the passenger. The lawsuit also seeks access to footage from police body-worn cameras and dash cameras.
ECPO denied the request because it is “concerned” that the officer may refuse to testify before the grand jury if his or her name is publicly disclosed. Mr. Rivera’s lawsuit argues that this ...
Pashman Stein Walder Hayden partner CJ Griffin has published an article in the April 2019 issue of New Jersey Lawyer magazine, titled "The Legal Implications of Governmental Social Media Use." A full copy of the article can be viewed here:
In September 2018, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of long-time client Steven Wronko seeking the list of users that Carteret Mayor Daniel J. Reiman has banned from his Facebook page.
Carteret opposed the lawsuit, arguing that Mayor Reiman's Facebook page was simply a personal page and that he has constitutional right to ban members of the public and a privacy interest in keeping the ban list secret.
We responded and provided over 200 pages of screenshots from the Mayor's Facebook page which showed that Mayor Reiman used his Facebook page to declare weather emergencies and keep the public ...
Perhaps the most important thing to remember about OPRA is that there is a very, very short statute of limitations period. This means that if you receive a denial, you need to act very quickly or you may lose your rights to gain access to the record you seek.
What do you do if you receive a denial from an agency or if the agency unlawfully redacts information from government records?
The best course of action is to immediately speak to an attorney, who can work with you to gain access to the records. This frequently requires a lawsuit filed in Superior Court. Again, the most important thing to ...
NJ Advance Media has written about the recent lawsuit we filed on behalf of Libertarians for Transparent Government seeking a settlement/separation agreement between Cumberland County and a corrections officer who allegedly had inappropriate relationships with inmates. The lawsuit also asks the Court to find that Cumberland County violated OPRA when it told Plaintiff that the corrections officer was "terminated for disciplinary reasons," when the Pension Board's meeting minutes state that he was allowed to "retire in good standing."
PSWH partner CJ Griffin is quoted in the ...
This week, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a split decision (4-3) in Paff v. Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office and once again ruled that dash camera videos that pertain to criminal investigations are not subject to the Open Public Records Act (OPRA).
While the decision is a serious disappointment to transparency advocates, it does not actually change the status quo. Last year, in North Jersey Media Group Inc. v. Township of Lyndhurst, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the dash cam video of a police-involved deadly shooting was not subject to OPRA because there was no Attorney ...
Update: We have written extensively about this topic since this blog was published in 2015 and have filed successful suits for Facebook records. For updated content, click here, here, and here.
As the number of public agencies with a social media presence grows, questions arise regarding whether the content of the social media sites is a “government record” subject to OPRA. We believe that it is.
OPRA defines government records very broadly and includes “information stored or maintained electronically.” This should cover posts made on a public agency’s official ...
