Utah Court Rules – Published for Comment
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Posted: June 26, 2023
CJA04-0202.11. Vexatious record requester (NEW). New proposed rule establishing a process whereby an administrative unit in the judicial branch can petition for relief from a person the administrative unit believes to be a vexatious records requester. The rule is in response to S.B. 231 and 63G-2-702(5) passed during the 2023 legislative session.
This rule appears to offer an appropriately thoughtful balance. One area of concern I have is that sometimes I will get a client at a jail or prison who has been denied records requests because the request simply asks for information previously provided. Inmates in correctional facilities occasionally have legal documents destroyed or confiscated, which requires follow-up requests. Others sometimes don’t appreciate how to make an appropriate request or appeal a denial due to intellectual disabilities or language barriers. I can appreciate that there has to be some sort of way to get relief from a vexatious requester, but I have concerns about situations in which a pro se individual finally gets an attorney to help them with their legal concern, and that attorney makes a request on behalf of that person where the attorney’s request may be able to navigate the hurdles that the pro se requester couldn’t. If the person was already deemed vexatious, then the attorney’s sensible request may be blocked just as there is finally someone involved in the situation who can actually get to the bottom of the inmate’s concern, provided that the request would be accepted such that the attorney can review the documents that the inmate wanted to get but couldn’t wrap their heads around the appropriate way to make a request for the records that they actually need.
I don’t know if there can be some sort of “change of circumstance” exception, or some kind of “newly retained counsel gets one free pass” rule for situations after the opportunity for an appeal has passed (or without needing to do an appeal), but I hope the committee can make some sort of small revision that allows for something along those lines. The risk here is that if I have a potential client whose sympathetic story prompts me to further investigate the concern, but I can’t get access to records related to that concern because the person has burned their bridges with the record keeper, then I may have to turn down helping that person simply because I can’t get enough information to decide whether their concern is legally viable. And I hope the committee will agree that such a situation is sufficiently foreseeable that some kind of equitable exception ought to apply.
Otherwise, I very much understand and appreciate the delicate balance that went into crafting this rule.
Dear utcourts.gov admin, Good to see your posts!