WIREdata, Inc. v. Village of Sussex
From Sunshine Review
WIREData, Inc. v. Village of Sussex is a 1,143-page decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court handed down in June 2008.
The court determined in its ruling that three Wisconsin municipalities (Sussex, Thiensville and Port Washington) did not violate the Wisconsin Open Records Law when they failed to give a real estate listing service access to property assessment records in a computer database.
The decision overturned a Court of Appeals decision that had ordered the cities to give WIREdata Corp. access to property assessment records in the format that the data was kept in by the private contractors who collected the information.
WIREdata got the reports in PDF form rather than in the format used by those who collected the information it sought.
The appeals court had determined that requesters must be given access to a municipality’s, or other government agency’s, electronic databases to examine them, extract information from them or copy them.
The Supreme Court ruled that the PDFs provided by the cities satisfied WIREdata’s initial records request.[1]
[edit] External links
- Text of decision
- Your Right to Know from WISFOIC.
- Review of decision from WICourts
- Municipalities violated open records law by providing pdf of property assessment records and not allowing access to database from Electronic Discovery Law
- Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules on WIREdata Case from GeoData Policy
- Open Records Law: The Buck Stops with Municipalities! from the Wisconsin Insurance Law Alert
- Cities cannot shift open records duties to contractors from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
- Four Cases Important to REALTORS from the Wisconsin Real Estate Magazine
- WIREdata Decision Favorable but Public Record Requests Remain Municipal Responsibility from the League of Wisconsin Municipalities
- 2007 - 08 Significant Supreme Court Decisions from Wisconsin Lawyer
