Supervisors Delay Action on Plan to Sell Court Records

After hearing sharp criticism from newspaper and media organizations, the Board of Supervisors postponed action Thursday on a controversial plan to sell Los Angeles County’s civil court records in computerized form to private companies that could resell them at a profit to the public.

The proposal, advanced by a county advisory group, would give the courts and the financially strapped county general fund a share of the profits from the sale of the court information in electronic form to businesses that would in turn market them.

Earl S. Bradley, court administrator for the Newhall Municipal Court, told the supervisors that the plan would allow the public to get civil court records “much more cheaply, timely and accurately” than the present system of requesting them in person at county courthouses.

Attorneys for the Los Angeles Times and the California Newspaper Publishers Assn. adamantly opposed the plan. “The county has an obligation as a government to maintain public records for the public,” said Karlene Goller, associate general counsel for The Times.

Although Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Gloria Molina backed the plan, a skeptical Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky grilled county officials about the proposal. The matter was postponed until next month.