Palm Beach County Classroom Teacher's Ass'n v. School Board of Palm Beach County
Palm Beach County Classroom Teacher's Ass'n v. School Board of Palm Beach County
Opinion of the Court
Plaintiffs/appellants, Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers’ Association (CTA) and Warren G. Cutts, appeal the denial of in-junctive relief against defendants/appel-lees, the School Board of Palm Beach County, Ann Doyle and Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. A dispute arose between the appellants and the School Board regarding the interpretation and application of the collective bargaining agreement between CTA and the School Board. This agreement encompasses the terms and conditions of em
On June 15, 1981, the CTA and Cutts filed a complaint in the lower court seeking a judicial declaration that the Government in the Sunshine Act, Section 286.011, Florida Statutes (1979), did not apply to grievance arbitration hearings conducted pursuant to the agreement between CTA and the School Board, and also seeking to enjoin Palm Beach Newspapers, its officers, agents, and employees, as well as Doyle, from attending any arbitration involving the CTA and the School Board. Later, the appellants served upon the appellees a motion for preliminary injunctive relief. The trial court denied their request for a preliminary injunction and this interlocutory appeal followed. The main action seeking a declaration of the non-application of the open meeting requirements of Section 286.-011 is still pending and has not yet been tried or determined.
We conclude the trial court did not err in denying the injunction. We reach this conclusion initially on the narrow ground that the granting of a preliminary injunction is within the trial court’s broad discretion and its determination will not be overruled absent an abuse of discretion. There has been no such demonstration here. Contemporary Interiors v. Four Marks, Inc., 384 So.2d 734 (Fla. 4th DCA 1980). Further, this court recently issued an opinion in the case of Mills v. Doyle, 407 So.2d 348 (Fla. 4th DCA 1981), which involved essentially the same parties. In that case, Doyle had orally requested permission to inspect any grievance filed by Cutts against the School Board. When access was refused, Doyle made written demand upon the School Board to allow access to any written grievance filed by Cutts for the year 1980, and to any material contained in the file relating to such grievance or grievances. The School Board refused and Doyle filed a petition for writ of mandamus in the circuit court to require the Board to comply with the mandate of Chapter 119, Florida Statutes (1979). That chapter provides for the personal inspection by any person of all state, county, and municipal records. The trial court in that case entered a writ of mandamus commanding the appellants to open their records for inspection in accordance with Chapter 119, Florida Statutes (1979). On appeal we held that the grievance records of the teachers employed by the Palm Beach County School Board were public records within the purview of the Public Records Act. Furthermore, we stated:
[T]he trial court was correct in shunting aside the argument that the collective bargaining contract between the CTA and the School Board established the confidentiality of the subject records, for to allow the elimination of public records from the mandate of Chapter 119 by private contract w.ould sound the death knell of the Act.
In a similar vein, we believe that the provisions of a private agreement entered into by public bodies cannot be used to circumvent the requirements of public meetings in Section 286.011, Florida Statutes (1979). To rule otherwise and hold that an arbitration hearing may be closed to the public even though the grievance and other documentation on which it is based is a public document makes little sense to us. However, since the trial court has not yet expressly ruled on the application of Section 286.011, we also decline to do so and simply affirm on the narrow ground that
AFFIRMED.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- PALM BEACH COUNTY CLASSROOM TEACHER'S ASSOCIATION and Warren G. Cutts v. The SCHOOL BOARD OF PALM BEACH COUNTY, Ann Doyle, and Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
- Cited By
- 5 cases
- Status
- Published