The Montana Supreme Court published In Re Marriage of Chapman and Panagakis, 2009 MT 119N, on April 9, 2009. The decision itself contains the full dates of birth of both children. Section 4.50 (c)(4) of the Rules for Privacy and Public Access to Court Records in Montana states that full birth dates of any person are not to be shown in any public court record. Technically, this inclusion of private information in a court decision does not violate the Privacy Rules, as Section 4.50 (d) places sole responsibility for keeping such information out of court records on the litigant: “It is the responsibility of the filing party to comply with these rules to protect private information.”
This case illustrates the difficulty in sanitizing public court records of information that could lead to identity theft or worse. It is exceedingly easy for these kinds of details to be overlooked. Once published on the internet, however, all court control of this information is lost. These birth dates will be available forever.
