Immanuel v. Comptroller of the Treasury

WOODWARD, J. On November 3, 2011, Henry Immanuel, appellant, sent a Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) request to the Comptroller of the Treasury, appellee. Immanuel requested a list of the top 5,000 “unclaimed property accounts ... that have been with your agency for 24 months or more ... formatted from largest account values to smallest account values.” The Comptroller denied Immanuel’s MPIA request on the grounds that the information requested contained individual financial information, which is prohibited from disclosure under the MPIA. See Md.Code (2014), § 4-336(b) of the General Provisions Article (“GP”). On May 4, 2012, Immanuel filed a petition for judicial review of the Comptroller’s denial in the Circuit Court for Wicomico County.

By order dated July 13, 2012, the court directed the Comptroller to comply with Immanuel’s MPIA request. Immanuel also filed a motion to seal the case record on the grounds that the record contained his trade secrets, which the court granted. The Comptroller filed an appeal to this Court, which reversed and remanded the case in a published opinion, Comptroller of Treasury v. Immanuel, 216 Md.App. 259 , 85 A.3d 878 (2014) (“Immanuel I ”). In Imman-uel I, we concluded that “Immanuel should emerge on remand with a list of claims that tracks the Comptroller’s disclosure ⁵⁸⁵ obligations under the Abandoned Property Act.” Id. at 275 , 85 A.3d 878 .

On remand, on July 21, 2014, the circuit court ordered Immanuel to submit a modified MPIA request, limited to accounts received by the Comptroller within 365 days with a value of $100 or greater, without any sorting by value or other financial information. In addition, the court vacated its order to seal. On appeal, Immanuel presents two questions for our review, which we have slightly rephrased: 1. Did the circuit court err or abuse its discretion by not following this Court’s mandate on remand? 2.

Did the circuit court err by vacating its order to seal? We answer both questions in the negative and, accordingly, affirm the judgment of the circuit court. BACKGROUND The background for this case is set forth in Immanuel I: In his role as legal custodian of millions of dollars’ worth of unclaimed property, the Comptroller enters and stores in a database information regarding the property he is holding and who might be entitled to claim it. As the Comptroller receives each piece of abandoned property, his staff logs data about the property, its value, and the likely owner into the Comptroller’s database.

The Comptroller is required by the Abandoned Property Act to publish annually, in local newspapers, the names and last known addresses of those individuals who appear to be the owners of property valued at $100 or more, although the published list does not disclose either the nature of unclaimed items of property or their value. [] Immanuel is a “tracer,” someone who locates the owners of unclaimed property held by the Comptroller and, for a fee, assists those people in obtaining their property. On November 3, 2011, [] Immanuel sent a letter to the Comptroller requesting “a printout of all unclaimed proper ⁵⁸⁶ ty accounts” that had been unclaimed for two years or longer. In addition to requesting publicly available information—specifically, the names and last-known addresses of those entitled to the property—he asked the Comptroller to format the list “from largest account values to smallest account values” and to provide him “with the listing of the top 5,000 accounts after this formatting is done.” In his request, [ ] Immanuel acknowledged that the Public Information Act prohibited him from receiving “information concerning the specific value of each account or a description of the property,” and he asked that, once the list was sorted, the specific values be removed. Although the Comptroller, with the help of his information technology (“IT”) department, has the ability to perform [ ] Immanuel’s request, the Comptroller denied it.

Since 1978, [ ] Immanuel has submitted requests asking for lists of names and addresses sorted by value. The Comptroller granted those requests until 1992. That year, however, the Attorney General issued an opinion stating that the Public Information Act prohibited the Comptroller from disclosing the monetary value of individual items of unclaimed property to members of the public. [ ] Immanu-el, nonetheless, made five other requests in the years since, all five of which, including the one at issue, the Comptroller denied. [On May 4, 2012,] Immanuel filed a petition seeking judicial review of the Comptroller’s most recent denial in the Circuit Court for Wicomico County. The court held a hearing [on June 7, 2012,] and took testimony from [] Immanuel and Eric Eichler, the Assistant Manager of the Comptroller’s Unclaimed Property Unit.

According to [] Eichler, the Comptroller’s IT staff logs information about each piece of unclaimed property into a database as the Comptroller receives it. From there, the IT staff can extract and sort data from the database, and does so for non-agency requesters with enough regularity that he maintains (and publishes on a “form letter”) a schedule of fees. [ ] Eichler acknowledged that the Comptroller maintains “a ⁵⁸⁷ list available for the public if they need to, but it’s not sorted by dollar value.” He also testified that the Comptroller extracts and produces lists from this database in batches of 10,000 records in the normal course, for which it charges $500, and that the Comptroller’s fee schedule includes at least some forms of sorting. (“Q. But if my client were willing to pay for the [dollar-value] sort, doesn’t this fee schedule cover that potential? A. Yes, depending on what the sort is, I assume.”) At the conclusion of the hearing, the circuit court declared that “[t]aking the additional step of formatting the list before redacting the financial information does nothing to reveal prohibited information.” Then, observing that “disclosure of public records is favored” in Maryland, the court granted [ ] Immanuel the relief he sought ánd ordered the Comptroller to provide him with the information in the format he had requested.

Id. at 263-65, 85 A.3d 878 (footnotes omitted). The circuit court issued an Opinion and Order on July 13, 2012, ordering the Comptroller to “comply with [Immanuel’s MPIA] request and provide the unclaimed property records in the manner requested therein.” On July 23, 2012, Immanuel filed a Motion to Seal or Otherwise Limit Inspection of a Case Record (Rule 16-1009(a)(l)(A)) (“Motion to Seal”) on the grounds that the record contained his trade secrets. On August 9, 2012, the court granted Immanuel’s motion to seal the case record (“order to seal”). Also on August 9, 2012, the Comptroller filed his notice of appeal of the court’s July 13, 2012 Opinion and Order.

On April 18, 2013, Immanuel filed a Motion to Seal the Record with this Court. We granted Immanuel’s Motion to Seal the Record on May 9, 2013. On January 29, 2014, this Court decided Immanuel I. We stated therein: [W]e hold that, in light of the Abandoned Property Act, the request seeks information that the Comptroller is required to disclose. That said, we also hold that a list sorted by ⁵⁸⁸ dollar value would reveal additional individual financial information [that] Immanuel is not entitled to have, and we find that his request may be overbroad in one other way as well.

So although [ ] Immanuel is entitled to the bulk of the information he has requested, we reverse the judgment of the circuit court and remand for further proceedings for the limited purpose of determining the precise scope and format of the list the Comptroller must produce. 216 Md.App. at 262-68 , 85 A.3d 878 (emphasis added). On February 5, 2014, Immanuel filed a second MPIA request with the Comptroller, asking “that the top 100 accounts be made available to [him], include all data that is available to [him] that will not be considered private or confidential.” On February 5, 2014, Immanuel filed a Motion to Seal the Opinion with this Court, requesting that we change the designation of Immanuel I to unreported. Also, on February 20, 2014, Immanuel filed a Motion to Redact the Opinion with this Court, requesting that we redact the opinion of Immanuel I and change its designation to unreported. On February 28, 2014, the Comptroller filed with this Court a motion for partial reconsideration and opposition to Immanuel’s motions to seal and redact the opinion.

The Comptroller noted in its motion that Immanuel’s February 5, 2014 MPIA request demonstrates [that] the Court’s decision could be read to permit requesters to obtain comparative financial information about unclaimed property owners and to effectively allow these requesters to create their own ranking of claims by value—a type of information that this Court explicitly held was exempt from disclosure. The Comptroller therefore respectfully requests that the Court reconsider its decision and hold that [ ] Immanuel is not entitled to a list of any “top number” of claims. On March 5, 2014, this Court denied Immanuel’s motions to seal and redact Immanuel I. On March 27, 2014, we denied the Comptroller’s motion for partial reconsideration, because “[t]he issues raised by the Comptroller in the Motion for ⁵⁸⁹ Partial Reconsideration must be considered, in the first instance, by the circuit court and upon an appropriate record.” On July 11, 2014, the Comptroller filed a Memorandum of Law on Remand with the circuit court. Immanuel filed his own memorandum on July 17, 2014.

On July 21, 2014, the court held a hearing pursuant to our remand order. After the hearing and on the same day, the court issued an Order (1) directing Immanuel to submit a “modified” MPIA request, limited to accounts received by the Comptroller within 365 days with a value of $100 or greater, without any sorting by value or other financial information, and (2) ordering the Comptroller to comply with such request. In addition, the court denied Immanuel’s oral request to continue to seal the case and vacated its earlier order to seal. On August 18, 2014, Immanuel filed a timely notice of appeal.

STANDARD OF REVIEW Maryland Rule 8—604(d)(1) provides that, “[u]pon remand, the lower court shall conduct any further proceedings necessary to determine the action in accordance with the opinion and order of the appellate court.” Rule 8-606(e) states that, upon receiving the appellate court’s mandate, “the lower court shall proceed in accordance with its terms.” This Court has stated the following regarding a trial court’s obligations following the issuance of an appellate opinion: While the Maryland cases and rules describe generally the importance of the court’s mandate and the procedures to be followed by the trial court—ie., “in accordance with the tenor and direction thereof’—they have not clearly described exactly what comprises the complete “order” or “judgment” of the court. As we construe these rules, and the cases discussing them, it is apparent that, in Maryland, the opinion, at the very least, may be an integral part of the appellate court’s order or mandate when that order or mandate provides for a remand for proceedings consistent with the opinion. Moreover, when it is apparent from the opinion itself that a simplified “order” or mandate, e.g., ⁵⁹⁰ “Judgment Reversed,” is ambiguous, then the opinion may be referred to and considered an integral part of that mandate. There may be, as we discuss infra, many types of unitary judgments or mandates, as opposed to multiple, severable parts of judgments, in which such a “Judgment Reversed” order or mandate would not be ambiguous and there would be no need to refer to the opinion.

Generally, however, any direction in an order or mandate that proceedings on remand are to be consistent with the opinion would necessarily require the opinion to be considered as an integral part of the judgment. This position is consistent with the law of mandates as stated by most, but not all, of the few foreign jurisdictions that have squarely addressed the issue. Harrison v. Harrison, 109 Md.App. 652, 665-66 , 675 A.2d 1003 (emphasis added), cert. denied, 343 Md. 564 , 683 A.2d 177 (1996). DISCUSSION In Immanuel I, we concluded our opinion by stating: [W]e reverse the judgment below and remand for further proceedings for the limited purpose of allowing the circuit court to determine the precise boundaries of the production the Comptroller must make to [ ] Immanuel.

In practical terms, [ ] Immanuel should emerge on remand with a list of claims that tracks the Comptroller’s disclosure obligations under the Abandoned Property Act, but that is not sorted by dollar value. 216 Md.App. at 275 , 85 A.3d 878 (emphasis added). Our mandate then read: JUDGMENT OF THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR WICOMI-CO COUNTY REVERSED AND REMANDED FOR FURTHER PROCEEDINGS CONSISTENT WITH THIS OPINION. COSTS TO BE DIVIDED EQUALLY BETWEEN THE PARTIES. Id.

Following a hearing, the circuit court issued the following order on July 21, 2014: ⁵⁹¹ ORDERED, that [Immanuel] submit a modified request for information to the [Comptroller] that is limited to information received by the [Comptroller] within 365 days prior to the date of this Order, said information to be limited to an alphabetical list of the names and last known addresses of individuals owning property with a value of one hundred dollars or more; said information shall not include a list of claims sorted in order of value or other financial information; It is further ORDERED that the [Comptroller] comply with any subsequent request for information made by [Im-manuel] that is consistent with this Order, in the format requested by [Immanuel], subject to costs customarily charged by the [Comptroller]; and it is further ORDERED that [Immanuel’s] request for attorney’s fees is denied; [Immanuel’s] oral request to seal this case is denied; and this court’s earlier order to seal this case is vacated. I. Circuit Court’s Order on Remand Immanuel argues that the circuit court erred by not following this Court’s mandate on remand. First, Immanuel contends that the court erred by ignoring “the instructions given to it by this Court and ordered [him] to submit a new modified request for information and thereby start the entire [M]PIA request all over.” Immanuel contends that Immanuel I did not alter the circuit court’s original judgment ordering the Comptroller to comply with his MPIA request within thirty days, and that the court should have ordered the Comptroller to submit an alphabetized list of the top 5,000 claims, without any information regarding the monetary value of such claims, to Immanuel within thirty days. Next, Immanuel argues that the circuit court’s order “went beyond the purpose of the remand” by requiring that his new request be limited to all accounts over $100 received by the Comptroller within 365 days prior to the date of the order, because (1) the circuit court “did not specifically order the Comptroller to provide the list of [the top] 5,000 accounts,” and (2) the 365- ⁵⁹² day requirement “only applies to the Comptroller’s publication of recently obtained abandoned property,” and “ignores the legislative requirement that [Immanuel’s] fee agreement would be unenforceable if 24 months (730 days) had not passed since the property was delivered to the Comptroller’s Office.” The Comptroller responds that the circuit court complied with this Court’s remand instructions by entering an order that tracked the requirements of the Abandoned Property Act.

The Comptroller argues that the circuit court’s decision to require Immanuel to submit a modified request was an appropriate exercise of the discretion accorded it by this Court to “determine the appropriate scope and mechanics of the Comptroller’s production.” See Immanuel I, 216 Md.App. at 263 , 85 A.3d 878 . According to the Comptroller, “this issue will soon become moot, as the Comptroller will, in the near future, be producing to [ ] Immanuel the information described in the circuit court’s order without waiting for [] Immanuel to submit a modified request.” Next, the Comptroller argues that Immanuel continues to seek a value-based list of claims to which he is not entitled, because the Abandoned Property Act only allows for disclosure of property valued at $100 or more, not “other value-based differential of claims.” According to the Comptroller, “a list of the most valuable 5,000 claims necessarily provides additional individual financial information about the size of those 5,000 claims relative to” claims that would appear on the larger list of property valued at $100 or more. Furthermore, the Comptroller contends that, if [ ] Immanuel were to succeed in requesting a list of the 5,000 most valuable claims, it is unclear what would stop him from subsequently submitting iterative requests for the 4,900 most valuable claims, the 4,800 most valuable claims, and on down until he had a tiered list providing essentially the same information this Court has already said he is not entitled to receive about the relative value of claims. According to the Comptroller, such contention is not “idle speculation,” because Immanuel has already made a second MPIA request for a list of the top 100 claims. ⁵⁹³ As an initial matter, we agree with the Comptroller that Immanuel’s claim of error relating to the trial court’s order requiring a new MPIA request is moot, because the Comptroller agreed to disclose the information specified in the circuit court’s order without a new MPIA request.

At oral argument before this Court, the Comptroller’s counsel disclosed that, on the day before oral argument, he e-mailed to Immanuel’s counsel a list of all claims of unclaimed property in its possession, with no restriction by time. This list contained approximately 900,000 claims. As for Immanuel’s contention that the circuit court’s order went beyond the purpose of the remand, we hold that the circuit court did not err or abuse the discretion that we delegated to it. In Immanuel I , instead of specifying exactly which information Immanuel was entitled to receive from the Comptroller, we delegated this authority to the circuit court “to determine the precise boundaries of the production the Comptroller must make.” 216 Md.App. at 275 , 85 A.3d 878 .

Rather than stating that the Comptroller should