North Carolina Lawyers Weekly
Ochsner v. Elon University (Lawyers Weekly No. 12-07-0591, 19 pp.) (Cressie H. Thigpen Jr., J.) Appealed from Alamance County Superior Court. (Michael O’Foghludha, J.) N.C. App. Full-text opinion.
Holding: Even though the Public Records Act applies to public law enforcement agencies, the Act defines “public law enforcement agency” to mean “a municipal police department, a county police department, a sheriff’s department, a company police agency commissioned by the Attorney General pursuant to G.S. 74E-1, et seq., and any State or local agency, force, department, or unit responsible for investigating, preventing, or solving violations of the law.” Since campus police departments are not in this list, we find that the General Assembly did not intend for campus police departments to be subject to the Act.
We affirm the trial court’s grant of defendants’ motions to dismiss.
The trial court also correctly found that the defendant N.C. Attorney General is not the custodian of arrest records maintained by the Elon Campus Police Department.
