Opinion Letter No. 91-27
December 13, 1991
Sanitarian’s Report Concerning a Food Poisoning Incident
The Department of Health (DOH) must make available for public inspection and copying the sanitarian’s final report concerning the fish market involved in a food poisoning incident. The fish market, which is a corporation and not a natural person, does not have a privacy interest in the sanitarian’s final report under the UIPA.
Further, the disclosure of the sanitarian’s final report could not reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings, or frustrate any other legitimate government function, since the DOH provided the fish market’s owner with a copy of the final report. Therefore, the OIP found that the sanitarian’s final report did not fall within the “clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy” and the “frustration of a legitimate government function” exceptions to disclosure under the UIPA.