Supreme Court Takes A Fifth OPRA Case

Today the Supreme Court announced that it has granted review of the Appellate Division’s opinion in Paff v. Galloway Township. As I’ve noted, this is an extraordinarily important case, involving the question of whether OPRA requires public bodies to produce requested reports from the information contained in computer databases.

This is the fifth OPRA case currently pending before the Court, joining Verry v. Franklin Fire District No. 1 (whether a volunteer fire company that is a member of a Fire District is subject to OPRA), Lyndhurst (criminal investigatory records), Gilleran (security exemptions), and Firemen’s Assn (declaratory judgment  procedure and privacy issues).

And one more OPRA case will be before the Supreme Court soon. The Appellate Division’s recent opinion in Paff v. Ocean County Prosecutor, concerning police dashcam recordings, had a dissenting opinion. This gives the losing party an automatic right of appeal to the Supreme Court, and the Ocean County Prosecutor has indicated that an appeal will be filed.

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