Putnam County Court of Common Pleas, General Division Sealing & Redaction Procedures

CRITICAL

Personal and private information, including the listed identifiers, must be omitted from case documents submitted to the court or filed with the Clerk of Courts.

Pursuant to Rule 45 of the Rules of Superintendence for the Courts of Ohio, effective July 1, 2009, the following information is defined as personal and private and is to be omitted from all case documents submitted to the court or filed with the Clerk of Courts: A. Social Security numbers, except for the last four digits; B. Financial account numbers, including but not limited to debit card, charge card and credit card numbers; C. Employer and employee identification numbers; D. Juvenile's name in an abuse, neglect, or dependency case, except for the juvenile's initials or a generic abbreviation such as "CV" for "child victim"; E. Any other information deemed personal and private by any federal or state statute, regulation, executive order, or court ruling.

CRITICAL

Personal and private information must be submitted on the court's separate standard form and kept as a non-public record in a case-file envelope marked “Confidential.”

Personal and private information must be submitted on a separate form which will be deemed by the Court as non-public record. The Clerk of Courts will provide a standard form for use by all parties. The information will be kept in a separate envelope within the case file marked "Confidential".

CRITICAL

Journal entries containing personal and private information must be submitted in an unredacted non-public copy and a redacted public copy bearing the specified notation wherever information was removed; the court will sign both.

Journal entries that necessarily include personal and private information must be submitted to the Clerk of Courts office as follows: a copy that includes the personal and private information for placement in the non-public envelope and a copy with the personal and private information redacted for placement in the public file. The copy not containing the personal and private information (for the public file) will have the notation "personal and private information redacted" at all places in the document where such information was removed. The court will sign both journal entries.

WARNING

The Clerk will not remove personal and private information from file-stamped documents without a court order; specified older or transferred information remains public unless a removal petition is granted, in which case the information is placed in a non-public envelope and a redacted copy in the public file.

The Clerk of Courts will not remove any personal and private information from a file stamped document including records or transcripts transmitted to this court from another court, without a court order to do so. Any personal and private information in documents filed prior to July 1, 2009 is considered public. Any personal and private information in records or transcripts transmitted to this court from another court is considered public. A party or an attorney in a case, or any other person whose personal and private information is contained in a public record of this court may petition the court for the removal of personal and private information. If the request is granted, the personal and private information will be removed from the file-stamped document and placed in a separate envelope and deemed a non-public record. A redacted copy of the document will be placed in the public case file.