A Bergen County municipality violated statutory and common-law rights of access to public documents when it rejected a request for names and addresses of residents owning pets, a state judge ruled on Wednesday.
The borough of Fair Lawn had cited privacy and security consideration, namely that disclosing the identities of pet-license applicants might expose them to pet theft. But Bergen County Assignment Judge Peter Doyne deemed that concern “minimal at best” and outweighed by the disclosure goals of the Open Public Records Act.
