Castanares v. Super. Ct.
Annotate this CaseA California appellate court ruled on a case where a journalist, Arturo Castañares, sought access to video footage recorded by drones operated by the City of Chula Vista Police Department. Castañares filed a request under the California Public Records Act (CPRA) for video footage from all drone flights for a specific month. The City provided Castañares with all the information he requested except for the video footage, leading Castañares to file a lawsuit. The trial court ruled that the video footage was exempt from disclosure due to being classified as records of investigations and that the burden of redacting the footage outweighed the benefit of disclosing. Upon appeal, the appellate court found that the trial court erred in determining that all drone footage was exempt from disclosure under the CPRA. The court determined that the drone footage could be divided into three categories: footage that is part of an investigatory file, footage of investigations, and footage of factual inquiries. The first two categories are exempt from disclosure under the CPRA, while the third is not. The case was remanded for further proceedings, with the City asked to categorize the footage accordingly and argue why the catchall provision applies to the third category.
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