Committee hopes to simplify rules governing confidential information
Committee hopes to simplify rules governing confidential information
Two complex rules governing the identification of confidential information in court filings and encouraging the minimization of filing unnecessary personal information are getting a look from the Rules of Judicial Administration Committee with an eye to simplify the regulations.
The committee, in a straw vote at its June 17 meeting during the Bar’s Annual Convention, endorsed a subcommittee’s review and attempt to make Rules 2.420 and 2.425 more understandable. The vote came after a lively discussion that included questions about whether the rules could be simplified or whether the problem was the result of attorneys not taking time to learn their intricacies.
“The rules do work fine. If you go through them and try to figure out what the outcome should be, the rules generally get you the right answer,” said Don Christopher, who chairs the subcommittee examining the two rules. “The problem is getting there. It is a long, circuitous process. They’re the longest rules in Florida, with numerous cross references to other rules.
“This makes the Internal Revenue Code look like a novel. For that reason, I think there’s been a reluctance, if not an aversion, on the part of both the Bar and the judiciary to steer clear of these rules.”
Committee member Cynthia Guerra said court clerks, who have had severe budget cutbacks, don’t have the staff to thoroughly review documents for confidential information. She noted in a recent case where a probable cause affidavit, which included the name of a 12-year-old girl who had been raped by her father, was accidentally released to the press.
The notice of confidential information required under Rule 2.420 had not been filed with the affidavit, and the overworked clerks staff missed the error. Fortunately, Guerra said the reporter who received the affidavit swapped it for a redacted copy.
Committee Chair Amy Borman, general counsel for the 15th Judicial Circuit, said she saw a document filed that included the name of an undercover police officer. Fortunately, that was corrected before the document became public.
“Education is part of it. We can educate [lawyers] and we can teach them what we need to do,” Borman said. “But we can’t remember everything. We need to fix the rules to make them user-friendly in bite-size pieces so people can read them and follow them.”
Committee member Paul Regensdorf, who worked on Rules 2.420 and 2.425 (which went into effect in 2010), said no rule change would have fixed the problems cited by Guerra and Borman.
“Every practitioner and every person in the criminal justice system ought to know that’s information that is not to be made publicly available,” he said. “It’s not a rule problem. There may very well be improvements we could make [to the rules] but the problem is whoever made these two mistakes didn’t think.”
He agreed with Borman that there hasn’t been enough education about the two rules, including for judges, and said instruction was more important than redoing the rules.
“If you don’t know about Rule 2.420, is that a problem with the rule?” Regensdorf said. “It can’t be. It’s because they haven’t been taught about the rule. Rewriting a rule that they don’t know about won’t do any good.”
Alexandra Reiman, general counsel for the 17th Judicial Circuit, said she’s prepared educational materials for judges, lawyers, and local bars.
“I’ve been doing the education. People still don’t understand the rules,” she said. “It needs to be broken up and more understandable.”
The committee voted overwhelmingly for Christopher’s subcommittee to continue its work. The full committee next meets in October at the Bar’s Fall Meeting.