Welcome back. This issue, we return to a case you’ve seen before. Lawrence, the inmate case from Issue 118, came back to the Supreme Court this week for part two, and this time DRC left with a bill. That gives us reason to dig deeper into the Security Records exception, which is quietly one of the strongest tools a public office has and one of the easiest to fumble. From there we head to Reno, Nevada, for body camera footage of a mental health crisis call that ended with nobody dying, and we look at how Ohio law would treat releasing and redacting this kind of video. Our reader question takes us somewhere we’ve never been in 122 editions: the Ohio Personal Information Systems Act, and whether it changes your public records analysis. And stick around for a bonus about your retention schedule that could save your agency from destroying records while the law still allows a prosecution.
Also, last call: the subscriber-only webinar on Flock cameras is TOMORROW, at High Noon. Paid subscribers should have received a Zoom link by email last week. If you did not receive it, email us at publicrecordsbriefing@substack.com, and we will send you the link. This is a lunch and learn, so order your lunch here.
Court Case Review
State ex rel. Lawrence v. Dept. of Rehab. & Corr., 2026-Ohio-3471 (Supreme Court of Ohio)
As you could tell from the first link in this edition, he’s back! As you’ll remember from Issue 118, Requester Lawrence, an inmate (video of his cell here), asked DRC for his master file, and the department answered, “we don’t have that here.” The Court didn’t buy the “not at this location” approach and issued a limited writ (lawyer talk for order): produce the inmate master file or certify to the Court that you don’t have it. This kept the question of statutory damages alive while they waited to see what happened. Now we know.
DRC produced the file. And its certification of compliance never disputed that the department (as a whole, not just the building) had the file when Lawrence first asked for it. That combination decided the case. In a short per curiam (more silly Latin lawyer talk – means no named Justice wrote it – “by the court”) decision, the Court held that producing a record in response to a limited writ, without disputing that you possessed it at the time of the request, establishes that you failed to meet your obligation under the Public Records Act.
Then comes the math we keep repeating. Statutory damages run $100 for each business day of noncompliance, starting the day the mandamus action is filed, capped at $1,000. More than ten business days passed, so Lawrence gets the full $1,000. In the final opinion (not per curiam), every justice signed on except Justice Fischer, who dissented.
If the record existed and you had it, producing it under court order proves the violation instead of curing it. The time to find the record is when the request comes in. And note when the damages clock starts: the day the lawsuit is filed, not the day you lose. Every business day you spend litigating instead of looking costs $100 up until the cap is reached.
One footnote worth repeating from last issue: this is the tail end of the inmate damages pipeline. H.B. 265 cut off statutory damages for people in DRC custody as of April 9, 2025. This was the statement from the General Assembly. Lawrence’s requests predate the change. Yours don’t get that protection: every requester outside prison walls can still collect.
Now, the security records and work schedules issue. This part of Lawrence’s decision deserves more attention. The Security Record holding cuts both ways, yet most agencies only know one of the ways.
