§587-81 - Court records. - Hawaii Statutes

PART IX.  MISCELLANEOUS

 

     §587-81  Court records.  The court shall keep a record of all child protective proceedings under this chapter.  The written reports, photographs, x-rays, or other information of any nature which are submitted to the court may be made available to other appropriate persons, who are not parties, only upon an order of the court after the court has determined that such access is in the best interests of the child or serves some other legitimate purpose; provided that the department may disclose, without order of the court, such information as is in the court record in the manner and to the extent as is set forth in departmental rules that have been legally promulgated and concern the confidentiality of records; provided further that:

     (1)  The department shall not disclose parties' names to researchers without prior order of the court; and

     (2)  The department shall report each disclosure to the court and all parties as part of its next report to the court after the department has disclosed information pursuant to this section. [L 1983, c 171, pt of §1; am L 1986, c 316, §36]

 

Case Notes

 

  Where cases of minor and minor's siblings were so interrelated, release of information would have been harmful to minor's siblings, and redactions of information in record did not delete all information related to the other children, trial judge's ruling granting newspaper access to the family court's record was not in the best interest of the other children and violated the applicable legal standard in allowing access to a redacted version of the record.  91 H. 200, 982 P.2d 334.