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Opinion Letter No. 92-21
October 27, 1992
Settlement Agreement in 1963 Anti-Trust Suit
A settlement agreement in a 1963 film exhibition
anti-trust suit brought by the State must be made
available for public inspection and copying by the Department of
the Attorney General. The OIP
reached this conclusion despite the presence of a clause in a court-approved
stipulation between the
State and the defendants that the Attorney General argued could
reasonably be construed to contain a
promise by the State not to disclose the settlement agreement. Based
upon court decisions surveyed
in a 1989 opinion letter, the OIP stated that a public entity cannot
enter into enforceable promises of
confidentiality regarding records (or information contained therein)
that are not protected by an
applicable statutory exception.
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