Hodges v. Department of Health
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
No. 181 C.D. 2011
August 26, 2011
The Commonwealth Court ruled that an agency can meet its burden under the Right to Know Law by submitting an affidavit from its open records officer stating that the requested record does not exist.
Background
Alonzo Hodges, an inmate at a state prison, requested license information from the Department of Health about the health care provider at the prison where he is incarcerated. The department did not issue a timely response, and the request was deemed denied.
Hodges appealed to the Office of Open Records. In response to the appeal, the department issued an affidavit from its open records officer. The affidavit stated that the officer had made a thorough search for the requested records and determined that they did not exist in the department’s possession. The OOR ruled that the department had properly established that it did not possess the records and denied Hodges’ appeal. Hodges appealed to the Commonwealth Court.
Commonwealth Court Decision
On appeal, Hodges claimed that the officer’s affidavit was contradictory because it suggested that the records might exist under another name, spelling, or classification. The court ruled that this statement did not contradict the affidavit’s primary point – that the records did not exist in the department’s possession – noting the possibility of “misfiling or misclassification” exists in all cases.
As the court explained, an agency is “not required to sift through all of its records in order to determine if something under a different spelling or classification might possibly relate to [a] request.”
The court therefore ruled that the affidavit fulfilled the department’s burden of proof and rejected Hodges’ appeal.