Court of Appeal rules against media demanding access to police reports on road accidents

A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by two major media companies and a North Carolina law firm seeking access to traffic accident reports from the state Highway Patrol, the Department of Public Safety, Raleigh and two other cities.

The decision announced on Monday upheld a ruling by US District Judge Loretta Biggs, who found that she did not have jurisdiction to review the case.

Capitol Broadcasting and the McClatchy Company, the parent companies of WRAL Television and News and Observer, joined the law firm of James Scott Farrin to sue the two state broadcasters in Raleigh, Salisbury and Kannapolis.

All five defendants had refused to pass on accident reports to the media and the law firm. The defendants invoked a federal data protection law that prohibits the publication of the reports.

“At the heart of this declaratory action is the interplay of a handful of statutory provisions at the state and federal levels,” Judge Harvie Wilkinson wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Under the North Carolina Public Records Act, information collected by state and local agencies is “the property of the people,” Wilkinson noted.

“Now we turn to the federal side, where we encounter the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA),” the 4th Circuit opinion continued. “This law prohibits state DMVs from knowingly disclosing ‘personal information’ to any person or business.”

“It is at the intersection of the above provisions that the parties clash,” Wilkinson wrote. “Plaintiffs are two media companies and a law firm seeking to obtain accident reports to which they are entitled under state law. Defendants are three North Carolina municipalities and two state public safety agencies, all of which oversee and control law enforcement agencies. These agencies have denied plaintiffs’ requests for the accident reports and claim that the DPPA prohibits their release.”

The plaintiffs brought suit, challenging defendants’ “allegedly unfounded fear of liability under the DPPA.” The plaintiffs argued that access to the accident reports was “an essential part of exercising their rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

“The entire complaint raises a claim based entirely on state law,” Wilkinson explained. “The federal DPPA becomes relevant only insofar as it is an anticipatory defense to the claims based on the state NCPRA. In fact, the entire purpose of including the DPPA in the complaint is to preemptively defeat the defendants’ argument that it prohibits publication of the requested reports.”

Appellate judges rejected the plaintiffs’ attempt to base the suit on federal law. “The suit claims it ‘arises under the DPPA,’ but just because you allege something does not make it true,” Wilkinson wrote. “The suit itself is not founded in any way on the DPPA.”

“Plaintiffs do not claim any rights to indemnity arising from the DPPA, and they do not claim that the DPPA requires defendants to take any affirmative action. Nor could they,” Wilkinson continued. “The DPPA expressly creates rights only for one class of people: those whose information was improperly disclosed.”

“Plaintiffs clearly do not fall into this category,” the statement continues. “They are seeking disclosure, which is the exact opposite of alleging a violation of their privacy through the publication of a record. They would therefore not be entitled to sue in a federal private action under the DPPA.”

“Rather, plaintiffs rely only on the DPPA to argue that it does not prevent defendants from meeting their obligations under state law, thereby attempting to cut off defendants’ anticipated argument before it can begin,” Wilkinson wrote. “Nevertheless, it is well established that ‘a federal court has no original jurisdiction over a case in which the claim raises a cause of action under state law but also alleges that federal law deprives the defendant of a defense it could raise.'”

“This is precisely the situation we have here. The lawsuit therefore does not, at first glance, raise any federal law issue,” the appeals judges agreed. Wilkinson rejected the plaintiffs’ “jurisdictional acrobatics.”

The 4th Circuit also rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that their claims had “important First Amendment implications.” “This case is best viewed as a stand-alone dispute over a single state law and how its provisions may or may not be overridden by a federal law,” Wilkinson wrote. “While the complaint argues at length in its nearly 100 paragraphs why the DPPA does not prohibit public access to the accident reports it seeks, its mere two references to the First Amendment are very general and simply peripheral to the fundamental questions of statutory interpretation at stake.”

Wilkinson ended his opinion with a warning. “We think it appropriate to conclude by recognizing the limited role of the federal courts and the need for care in monitoring the outer limits of our power,” he wrote. “As the Supreme Court warned, ‘authorizing declaratory judgment as within the jurisdiction of the district court simply because … skillful pleading preempts a defense based on federal law’ would ‘undermine the entire thrust of Congress’ jurisdictional legislation, disregard the effective operation of the federal judicial system, and distort the limited procedural purpose of the declaratory judgment statute.’ The Court’s instruction demonstrates that judicial authority can earn respect both by its restraint and by its exercise.”

Justices Steven Agee and Henry Floyd joined Wilkinson in his opinion.