Today the Supreme Court added yet another OPRA case to its docket–the sixth one in the past year. In Paff v. Ocean County Prosecutor, the Court will consider two issues: (1) Does the criminal investigatory record exemption apply to a police dash cam video; and (2) If the video is subject to disclosure, can it be withheld due to the arrestee’s privacy interest?

The Court is already reviewing the first question in the Lyndhurst case; as explained here, it was obligated to accept review in the Paff case because there was a dissent in the Appellate Division on the criminal investigatory record issue. I expect that the Court will resolve the issue in Lyndhurst, since that case has already been argued.

The real importance of Paff v. Ocean County Prosecutor lies in the fact that the Court decided to grant review of the privacy question. The issue of the privacy rights of individuals shown in police dash cam videos is of great interest in New Jersey as well as throughout the country. And it will also be extremely significant, for OPRA  law in general, to have guidance from the Supreme Court on how to interpret and apply OPRA’s privacy exemption.

I’ve criticized the Appellate Division’s opinion in Paff for its mistaken ruling that people shown in police dash cam videos have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will correct this erroneous holding.