Administrative – North Carolina’s Public Records Act – N.C. Gen. Stat. §116-43.17

North Carolina’s Public Records Act exempts research information “of a proprietary nature” under section 116-43.17, interpreting the phrase to modify only “information” and to include any research information in which the owner has a protectable interest, not limited to trade secrets.

We affirmed the trial court’s interpretation of N.C. Gen. Stat. section 116-43.17.

We considered the scope of an exemption to North Carolina’s Public Records Act involving research-related materials held by a public university. Plaintiff, an investigative research organization focused on public health transparency, sought records concerning the work of Dr. Ralph Baric and his associations with the Wuhan Institute of Virology as part of its investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Between July 2020 and October 2021, Plaintiff submitted eight public records requests seeking documents dating back to 2009 from Dr. Baric and other university personnel.

Defendant university produced more than 130,000 pages of responsive documents but withheld 5,205 documents under several statutory exemptions, including N.C. Gen. Stat. §116-43.17, which exempts certain research-related materials from disclosure. Believing the university had interpreted this exemption too broadly, Plaintiff filed suit in April 2022 alleging violations of the Public Records Act. After procedural developments, including the appointment of a referee to review the contested documents under a protective order, the trial court adopted the referee’s report and granted partial summary judgment to both parties.

On appeal, Plaintiff raised two statutory interpretation arguments concerning section 116-43.17. First, it contended that the phrase “of a proprietary nature” modified not only “information,” but also “data” and “records,” thereby narrowing the scope of the exemption. Second, it argued that the trial court erred by defining “proprietary” broadly as information in which the owner has a protectable interest, rather than limiting it to trade secrets. The appellate court rejected both arguments. Applying the canon of the last antecedent, the court held that “of a proprietary nature” modifies only the immediately preceding word, “information,” and not “data” or “records.” The court relied on grammatical structure and punctuation, as well as guidance from U.S. Supreme Court and North Carolina Supreme Court precedent, including Lockhart v. United States and Wilkie, which applied the same interpretive principle in similarly structured statutes. We declined to apply the series-qualifier canon, finding that the statutory text did not reflect an integrated list to which the modifier would naturally apply across all terms.

We further concluded that the trial court properly defined “information of a proprietary nature” as “information in which the owner has a protectable interest.” Because section 116-43.17 does not define “proprietary,” we looked to the ordinary meaning of the term, citing dictionary definitions that extend beyond trade secrets to include privately owned or exclusive information. While acknowledging that public records exemptions must be construed narrowly, we emphasized that it could not substitute the term “trade secret” where the legislature chose broader language.

Accordingly, we affirmed the trial court’s interpretation of section 116-43.17 and upheld the partial summary judgment ruling, concluding that the challenged research information fell within the statutory exemption.

Affirmed.

US Right to Know v. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Lawyers Weekly No. 011-001-26, 18 pp.) (Jefferson Griffin, J.) Appealed from Orange County Superior Court (Alyson Adams Grine, J.) Walker Kiger, PLLC, by David “Steven” Walker and Korey D. Kiger, for Plaintiff-Appellant. Attorney General Jeff Jackson, by Deputy Solicitor General James W. Doggett and Special Deputy Attorney General Elizabeth Branch Jenkins, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Office of University Counsel, by Marla S. Bowman, for Defendant-Appellee. North Carolina Court of Appeals