By Jeffrey A. Roberts
CFOIC Executive Director
A judge in a “private” judicial system has largely denied a motion from the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition to lift a suppression order that has made an entire divorce case file and the order itself off-limits to the public.
Former Denver District Court Judge William Meyer of the Judicial Arbiter Group wrote in an order Thursday that disclosure of the register of actions is “warranted” as well as “a few other documents which include notices of hearings and various proposed orders regarding extensions of time.”
But he did not grant CFOIC’s request to open the case file of Kaufmann v. Kaufmann with only “truly sensitive” information redacted.
“The judge’s ruling, essentially denying our motion (with the exception of the register of actions and a scattering of purely procedural orders) is an affront to the strong presumption of public access to court records as recognized by Colorado’s civil rules and a chief justice directive,” CFOIC president Steve Zansberg responded in an emailed statement. “This case file is no different from the hundreds of thousands of other domestic relations/divorce cases litigated every day in state courts where, in sharp contrast, all motion papers, exhibits, and judicial orders are publicly available, with only truly personal and private information redacted.”
The divorce, which involves a deputy in the Colorado Attorney General’s office, is one of many being litigated outside of public view in a special Colorado judicial system that is mostly available only to “the rich, famous and well-to-do,” according to a Denver Gazette investigative series last April. “Private judges” hired to handle divorce cases under this system “suppress them from public view at far greater rates than in cases that rely on district court judges, leaving some legal experts wondering whether affluent clients are simply buying their way into secrecy,” the newspaper reported.
CFOIC filed a motion to intervene in Kaufmann v. Kauffman after learning about the private court system from The Gazette stories. A private judge, according to the newspaper, “is one that had previously served as a full-time jurist and is appointed to the position by the state’s Supreme Court chief justice after they retire.”
During an Oct. 27 hearing, Zansberg argued that case law and the Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure required Meyer to lift the suppression order he imposed in February 2022. He noted that the Colorado Court of Appeals held in 1994 “that that the public is entitled, presumptively, to see everything in a domestic relations case, including the financial affidavits of the parties. And that case alone commands that everything in this court file, other than truly personal and highly confidential information, must be disclosed.”
Zansberg, a First Amendment and media attorney, also cited a section of the Rules of Civil Procedure that says, “An order limiting access shall not be granted except upon a finding that the harm to the privacy of a person in interest outweighs the public interest.”
A lawyer for Steven Kaufmann, the deputy AG, argued against CFOIC’s motion. But the other party in the case, Alexis Denny Kaufmann, did not object to having the suppression order set aside, asking in a court filing only that her personal medical information be protected “in the least restrictive manner and as supported by law.”
In his order, Meyer wrote that he had previously found that “the harm resulting from public disclosure outweighed any public interest following disclosure. The Court notes that it made an independent evaluation by balancing the public and private interests at the time of issuance of the order limiting access and Protective Order, even though the Protective Order was stipulated by the parties.”
“The case involves over 1,100 filed documents consisting of tens of thousands of pages,” he added. “Virtually all pleadings involved discussions of medical information or financial information including information about the financial resources of third parties.”
Meyer wrote that he would withhold the disclosure of the register of actions for 45 days to give interested parties time to appeal the order, and “[u]nder no circumstances will the Intervenor (CFOIC) be entitled to financial or health care information contained in the court file.”
David Migoya, the journalist who authored The Denver Gazette series on private judges, told CFOIC that a version of the register of actions in Kaufmann v. Kaufmann is available to view on a subscription courts database run by Background Information Services Inc.
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