stating a court should endeavor to resolve controversies before it "without deciding constitutional issues, reaching such an issue only if it is entirely necessary to a decision on the cause in which it is raised" (quotation marks omitted)
How later courts described this case
- stating a court should endeavor to resolve controversies before it "without deciding constitutional issues, reaching such an issue only if it is entirely necessary to a decision on the cause in which it is raised" (quotation marks omitted)
- regarding a comparable hospital administration district, concluding that a designation as a "body politic and corporate'' in the enabling legislation rendered the hospital administration district a "political subdivision" for purposes of FOAA
- affirming the trial court’s finding that compensation information was not a trade secret when “employees ... receiving the compensation [were] under no duty to keep the Information secret”
- M.R. Evid. 507 trade secret privilege
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Dow v. Caribou Chamber of Commerce & Industry, 2005 Me. LEXIS 123 (2005)
The Town of Burlington is distinguishable on this point because, in that case, the HAD was created by operation of statute.
The opinion
ALEXANDER, J.,
concurring.
[¶ 23] I concur that the Freedom of Access Act should be broadly construed to allow access to all documents relating to public contracts that are within a public agency’s possession and control, unless subject to an exemption in the law. However, I want to emphasize that by contracting with a public agency, a private contractor does not open all of its private documents, not shared with the public agency, to public access. If the Quorum compensation records are shared with or approved by HAD # 1, they are public records; but if they are private to Quorum and its employees, and are not disclosed to HAD # 1, they would not be subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Access Act, absent the stipulation noted in footnote 12 of the Court’s opinion or the special provisions of section 10-A.