Bruce

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court of San Bernardino County denying a petition for a writ of mandate to compel respondent tax collector to make certain tax records regularly available for inspection by petitioner.

Appellant-petitioner is a citizen and taxpayer in San Bernardino County. One of his business endeavors is to locate parcels of land upon which the secured real property taxes are delinquent. He then contacts the owner of the land and endeavors to purchase the owner’s interest. After paying off the tax liens, he normally resells the parcel for a profit.

Appellant has for several years ascertained the identity of parcels burdened by back-tax liens by examining the delinquent tax abstracts, which are maintained by the tax collector and are under his exclusive custody, care, and control.

In his complaint, appellant alleged that in 1963 the tax collector refused, for a period of over four months, to let members of the public (except for representatives of title companies) examine the delinquent tax abstracts. Thereafter, members of the public were permitted to examine these records during one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon of each…

I dissent. Access to and inspection of public records is a fundamental right of citizenship, existing at common law. (Nowack v. Fuller (1928) 243 Mich. 200 [ 219 N.W. 749, 751 , 60 A.L.R. 1351 ]; State ex rel. Halloran v. McGrath (1937) 104 Mont. 490 [ 67 P.2d 838 ] ; People ex rel. Stenstrom v. Hartnett (1928) 224 App.Div. 127 [ 230 N.Y.S. 28 ], affd. 249 N.Y. 606 [ 164 N.E. 602 ] ; State v. Keller (1933) 143 Ore. 589 [ 21 P.2d 807, 812 ]; Palacios v. Corbett (1915, Tex.Civ.App.) 172 S.W. 777, 781 .) It can be abridged or circumscribed only for the most compelling public purpose, and then only by an officer or agency acting pursuant to express authority. Indeed, in North v. Foley (1933) 238 App.Div. 731 [ 265 N.Y.S. 780 ], mandamus was granted to a taxpayer who sought to examine public records under a statute which permitted “reasonable regulations to be prescribed by the officer having the custody” of the records. There the officer contended the investigation of records “would interrupt unduly the business” of his office. The court conceded (at p. 784) “that such an examination must necessarily, to some extent, interrupt the ordinary and usual course of business in public…