John Doe v. New Hampshire Liquor Commission, Bureau of Enforcement & a.

THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

SUPREME COURT

In Case No. 2024-0319, John Doe v. New Hampshire Liquor Commission, Bureau of Enforcement & a., the court on December 17, 2025, issued the following order:

The court has reviewed the written arguments and the record submitted on appeal, and has determined to resolve the case by way of this order. See Sup. Ct. R. 20(3). The plaintiff, John Doe, appeals an order of the Superior Court (Kissinger, J.) granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants, the New Hampshire Liquor Commission, Bureau of Enforcement (commission), and the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office (AGO). The plaintiff sought an order that his name be removed from the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule (EES). See RSA 105:13-d (2023). On appeal, he argues that the trial court erred when it granted summary judgment to the defendants by: (1) applying the wrong standard in determining whether the information in his personnel file is "potentially exculpatory"; (2) adopting "stale and antiquated information";

(3) determining that his misconduct meets the EES criteria; and (4) concluding that he received sufficient due process. (Bolding omitted.) We affirm.

I. Background The following facts are established by the summary judgment record. The plaintiff was employed as an investigator with the commission. In August 2008, the commission initiated an internal investigation involving the plaintiff, following a complaint about his performance during an arrest. Subsequently, a second investigation was initiated involving the plaintiff due to "allegations of misleading false information given by [the plaintiff] in both verbal and written communications" during the first investigation. The second investigation concerned "facts and circumstances in [the plaintiff's] statements that were contradictory in nature to those of the witnesses, one of [whom] is a sergeant with the Concord Police Department." Following the investigations, the plaintiff was suspended with pay.

In December 2008, the Chief of the commission summarized the results of the investigations in a letter to the plaintiff:

The final outcome of this investigation has resulted in

substantiating these claims that the information outlined in your police report and during three separate interviews is not only inconsistent in and of themselves, but contradicts what the witnesses have said. The information obtained during this

1

2

investigation leads me to believe that these issues were not inadvertent in nature, nor misinterpreted during the course of your conduct. Rather, some of the information provided by you in your written police report and the interviews [was] not truthful. As a result, this has [led] to your credibility and integrity being compromised. The County [Attorneys] throughout the State and the Attorney General's Office will be notified that your conduct has placed you in a compromising position and therefore your name will be added to the "Laurie List" as directed by then Attorney General Peter W. Heed in his Memorandum dated February 13,

2004.

The letter states that the plaintiff, the plaintiff's union representative, and the Chief had met and "a mutual agreement was established" regarding disciplinary actions. Those disciplinary actions included a two-week suspension without pay and notification to all county attorneys and the AGO that the plaintiff is "considered to be a potential 'Laurie Issue.'" In addition, the plaintiff was "required to submit in writing any request by a defendant or defense attorney seeking information about this potential 'Laurie' status" with a copy "sent to the respective District Court, thereby alerting the District Court Judge to this issue for his/her review."

A typewritten acknowledgement at the end of the letter was crossed out and replaced by a handwritten statement:

Neither this agreement nor the documents referred to herein shall be considered an admission of any facts or allegations contained herein. I agree not to appeal this suspension; however, my agreement not to appeal this suspension shall not act as, nor should it be construed as, an admission of any fact or allegation contained herein.

The plaintiff signed on the typewritten signature line and initialed next to the handwritten acknowledgement. The letter included notice that the plaintiff had the right to appeal to the Personnel Appeals Board. See RSA 273-D:3, III (Supp. 2024). The plaintiff did not exercise that right.

In January 2009, in response to a prosecutor's motion, the Concord District Court (Boyle, J.) conducted an in camera review of the plaintiff's personnel file and determined that "there is a 'Laurie' issue" with the plaintiff

"that would cause the Court to question his credibility." The Chief subsequently sent a copy of the district court's order to the AGO. In September 2021, the legislature enacted RSA 105:13-d, authorizing the New Hampshire Department of Justice to maintain an EES consisting of "a list of all current or former law enforcement officers whose personnel

3

information contain potentially exculpatory evidence." RSA 105:13-d, I; see N.H. Ctr. for Pub. Interest Journalism v. N.H. Dep't of Justice, 173 N.H. 648, 651 (2020) (explaining that the "Laurie List" was subsequently renamed as the EES). Thereafter, the AGO sent the plaintiff a letter pursuant to RSA 105:13-d, notifying him that his name has been included on the EES and informing him of his statutory right to challenge that placement.

In March 2022, the plaintiff filed a petition for declaratory judgment seeking, among other things, a determination that pursuant to RSA 105:13-d, his name is not "appropriate for inclusion on the EES." The defendants moved for summary judgment. Following a hearing on the motion, the trial court concluded that: (1) in light of the Chief's determination that the plaintiff was dishonest and the district court's determination that his personnel file contained "Laurie" material, the plaintiff's dishonesty "bears on his general credibility, potentially triggering a prosecutor's obligation to disclose the misconduct to a criminal defendant in a case where . . . the [plaintiff's] credibility is at issue"; (2) neither the staleness of the misconduct nor the plaintiff's subsequent retirement from law enforcement eliminated the potentially exculpatory nature of the misconduct; and (3) given that the plaintiff "had an opportunity during the internal investigations and afterwards"

to appeal the Chief's conclusions, he received adequate due process. The plaintiff unsuccessfully moved for reconsideration. This appeal followed.

II. Analysis A moving party is entitled to summary judgment "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits filed, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." RSA 491:8-a, III (2010). We review the trial court's application of the law to the facts de novo. Taylor Community v. City of Laconia, 177 N.H. __, __ (2025), 2025 N.H. 38, ¶7.

The plaintiff first argues that, applying the standard set forth in Doe v. New Hampshire Attorney General (Activity Logs), 176 N.H. 806 (2024), 2024 N.H. 50, there is "no reasonably foreseeable case in which the information" in his personnel files "would be admissible as exculpatory evidence or could be used to impeach [his] credibility, due to the fact that the alleged misconduct is now over fifteen years old and [he] has not been a police officer since 2011." He asserts that the likelihood that he "would be required to testify as a former police officer for a criminal case is essentially zero," and his placement on the EES "would serve no purpose at this point other than to publicly embarrass him and his family." We disagree.

As we recently explained, "the proper inquiry in this context is whether, assuming a future case were to arise, it is reasonably foreseeable that evidence

4

of the plaintiff's misconduct would be admissible." Doe v. Concord Police Dep't, 177 N.H. __, __ (2025), 2025 N.H. 48, ¶22 (quotation omitted). "If it is not reasonably foreseeable that an officer's prior misconduct would be admissible if he or she is called to testify in a future case, then the officer's inclusion on the EES would be inappropriate." Id. This standard does not require courts to assess the likelihood that a criminal case would be brought at which the former officer would be called as a witness. See id. Here, the commission investigated allegations that the plaintiff had provided, both verbally and in writing, false information. The Chief determined that the investigation substantiated those claims and that the plaintiff's

"credibility and integrity" were "compromised." In 2009, the district court found, following an in camera review of the plaintiff's personnel file, that "there is a 'Laurie' issue with the [plaintiff] that would cause the Court to question his credibility." We conclude that the plaintiff's misconduct bears upon his general credibility and that it is reasonably foreseeable that evidence of it would be admissible. See id. at __, 2025 N.H. 48, ¶25. We disagree with the plaintiff that the fact that the misconduct is "over fifteen years old" renders it no longer potentially exculpatory. See id. (affirming trial court's conclusion that the fact that an internal police investigation undertaken twelve years earlier had determined the plaintiff was untruthful could be admissible as "acts probative of the plaintiff's general credibility and character for truthfulness or untruthfulness" (quotation and brackets omitted)); N.H. R. Ev. 608(b). Accordingly, we find no error with the trial court's ruling that the plaintiff's personnel file contains potentially exculpatory evidence which warrants his placement on the EES.

The plaintiff further argues that the trial court erred when it determined that he received sufficient due process. The plaintiff does not challenge the process he was provided. Rather, he asserts that had he known in 2008 "that the EES would become a public document" he "would have appealed the findings of the internal investigation." However, as the trial court reasoned: (1) the plaintiff had an opportunity during the internal investigations and afterwards to appeal the Chief's conclusions; (2) the Chief made the plaintiff aware that prosecutors within the state would be informed of his misconduct; and (3) the plaintiff participated in the investigations but did not appeal. Based on those facts, the court concluded that "the process the [plaintiff] received was fundamentally fair and thus constitutionally adequate." See Gantert v. City of Rochester, 168 N.H. 640, 648-50 (2016). We agree with the defendants that, having opted not to appeal the finding that he was untruthful, the plaintiff "cannot now premise a due process claim on his own decision to forego additional process to which he would otherwise have been entitled."

We have considered the plaintiff's remaining arguments and conclude that they do not warrant further discussion. See Vogel v. Vogel, 137 N.H. 321,

5

322 (1993); Sup. Ct. R. 25(8). Accordingly, we affirm the trial court's grant of summary judgment to the defendants.

Affirmed.

MACDONALD, C.J., and DONOVAN, COUNTWAY, and GOULD, JJ.,

concurred.

Timothy A. Gudas, Clerk