In Iloh v. Regents of the University of California (The Center for Scientific Integrity, Inc.), published January 13, 2023, the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division 3 affirmed a trial court's decision denying a preliminary injunction to bar production of documents under the California Public Records Act. While the plaintiff was a professor at University of California, Irvine, she published research articles in academic journals. She used her UCI e-mail address to communicate with the journals about her article submissions. She submitted the articles on her own behalf, not on behalf of UCI. UCI had no ownership interest in the articles, and they did not contain UCI's imprimatur. After four such articles were published, the articles were retracted or corrected by the journals. In communicating with the retractions, the plaintiff used her UCI e-mail address. It appears the retractions occurred due to concerns about possible plagerism or inaccurate citation references in Iloh's articles. Retraction Watch, published by the Center for Scientific Integrity, investigated the retractions. Retraction Watch sent a CPRA request to UCI seeking correspondence between UCI and the plaintiff regarding articles published in the journals, and correspondence between UCI or the plaintiff and the journals regarding the plaintiff's articles. UCI notified the plaintiff of the request and its intent to disclose the responsive records. The plaintiff petitioned for a writ of mandate, declaratory relief, and injunctive relief to prevent disclosure. The Regents of the University of California, which operates UCI, filed a notice of nonopposition to the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction. The requestor opposed the motion. The trial court denied the motion, finding the plaintiff had not established a likelihood of prevailing on the merits because she had not shown the records were not "public records" under the CPRA, nor that the records were otherwise exempt from disclosure. The plaintiff appealed denial of the preliminary injunction.
The appellate court ruled that the trial court had not abused its discretion in denying the injunction. The California Constitution requires that the CPRA's definition of "public records" subject to the CPRA be broadly construed, and that the exemptions from the CPRA be narrowly construed. The trial court acted within its discretion in deeming the requested correspondence to be public records. The requested correspondence was sent and received using UCI e-mail addresses and is therefore "owned, used, or retained" by UCI, a state agency. The articles at issue discuss topics directly relevant to the plaintiff's field of study at UCI, and were published in journals devoted to the same field of study. The requested communications appear to concern whether the plaintiff committed plagiarism or otherwise violated university policies on academic integrity--an issue tied to the use of public funds. The communications therefore involve the "public's business." The trial court also did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the communications were not exempt from disclosure. The plaintiff invoked the CPRA's "catch-all" exemption, which weighs whether the public interest served by not disclosing the record clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure. To prove the documents exempt, the plaintiff must establish a clear overbalance on the side of nondisclosure. Several public interests support disclosure: expenditure of public funds to pay the plaintiff and to investigate alleged academic dishonesty; academic research is central to UCI's public function; and the public has an interest in understanding how UCI addresses allegations of academic dishonesty. That is balanced against a legitimate public interest in protecting academic freedom. Case law establishes disclosure of prepublication communications about university research may impair the research process and have a chilling effect on academics. But those concerns do not apply to postpublication communications. The plaintiff did not meet her burden of establishing a clear overbalance on the side of nondisclosure. The trial court also acted within its discretion in concluding the communications were not exempt as personnel records. Even if copies of the communications were placed in the plaintiff's personnel file, the public interest in disclosure of the communications outweighs any privacy concerns in the communications.
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