County OKs Plan to Let Private Firms Resell Court Data

Despite strong objections from newspaper publishers, the Board of Supervisors approved an ambitious program Thursday to sell electronic data from Los Angeles County court records to private companies that would resell the information to the public for profit.

With most representatives of information companies urging approval, the board voted 4 to 1 to authorize the sale of the data on civil cases filed in the county despite protests from the Los Angeles Times and the California Newspaper Publishers Assn.

Board Chairwoman Gloria Molina said “public information is not compromised” by the plan to provide the court’s database to private companies, which would then sell their own version of the information.

But Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky objected to the program conceived by a county advisory group on information systems.

Karlene Goller, associate general counsel of The Times, told the board that the plan would deny the public access to the public information. She asked that the county at least provide the public access to the records with computer terminals at courthouses.

Currently, anyone who wishes to view a court file must appear at the courthouse and request to see it. The county charges for copies of the documents.

Yaroslavsky initially moved to require that public computer terminals be provided at courthouses, but backed down.

Earl S. Bradley, court administrator for the Newhall Municipal Court, told Yaroslavsky that proceeds from the program eventually would be used to provide public computer terminals. Outside the meeting, Bradley said he could not predict when the public terminals would be installed.

Proceeds of $1.2 million to $1.8 million a year could help finance upgrades to court computer systems and assist the county’s general fund.

The companies favored direct input of records rather than manually requesting records at courthouses and then entering the data into their computer systems.