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NOTICE: This opinion is subject to motions for rehearing under Rule 22 as well as formal revision before publication in the New Hampshire Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter, Supreme Court of New Hampshire, One Charles Doe Drive, Concord, New Hampshire 03301, of any editorial errors in order that corrections may be made before the opinion goes to press. Errors may be reported by E-mail at the following address: reporter@courts.state.nh.us. Opinions are available on the Internet by 9:00 a.m. on the morning of their release. The direct address of the court's home page is: http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme. THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE ___________________________

Merrimack No. 2010-770

PREMIUM RESEARCH SERVICES v. NEW HAMPSHIRE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR & a. Argued: October 13, 2011 Opinion Issued: November 29, 2011 Douglas, Leonard & Garvey, P.C., of Concord (Benjamin T. King on the brief and orally), for the petitioner.

Michael A. Delaney, attorney general (Lynmarie C. Cusack, assistant attorney general, on the memorandum of law and orally), for the respondents.

DALIANIS, C.J. The petitioner, Premium Research Services, appeals the dismissal by the Superior Court (McNamara, J.) of its petition under the Rightto-Know Law, RSA ch. 91-A (2001 & Supp. 2010), for disclosure of documents relating to disbursements from the second injury fund. See RSA 281-A:21-b (2010). We affirm. The following facts either appear in the petitioner's petition or are taken from the appellate record. "The second injury fund was created to encourage

employers to hire or retain employees with permanent physical or mental impairments of any origin by reducing the employer's liability for workers' compensation claims." Appeal of Hartford Ins. Co., 162 N.H. 91, 93 (2011) (quotation omitted). The fund reimburses employers or their workers' compensation insurance carriers when workers' compensation benefits have been paid to "an employee who has a permanent physical or mental impairment . . . from any cause or origin" who "incurs a subsequent disability" from a work-related injury that results in a greater workers' compensation liability "by reason of the combined effects of the preexisting impairment than . . . would have resulted from the subsequent injury alone." RSA 281-A:54, I (2010). The petitioner seeks information related to reimbursements from the second injury fund so that it can know whether a carrier has reported the reimbursement to the National Council on Compensation Insurers (NCCI). If the carrier has reported the reimbursement to the NCCI, as NCCI regulations require, then NCCI will take the reimbursement into account when setting the employer's "experience modification" or "experience mod." The carrier will then, in turn, reduce the employer's premium. Conversely, if the carrier does not report its reimbursement from the second injury fund to NCCI, NCCI will not adjust the employer's experience mod, and the carrier will not reduce the employer's insurance premium. The petitioner seeks to monitor this process to ensure that employers are not being overcharged for workers' compensation insurance. To obtain information about when the second injury fund has reimbursed carriers, the petitioner submitted an information request to respondent New Hampshire Department of Labor (DOL) on November 9, 2009. For each claim from the fund, the petitioner sought: (1) the employer's name; (2) the name of the insurance carrier filing for reimbursement from the fund; (3) the amount of reimbursement; (4) the accident date; (5) the date on which the second injury fund agreed to reimburse the employer/carrier; (6) the claim number; and (7) the employee's name, if possible. Relying upon RSA 281-A:21b, which exempts from the Right-to-Know Law "[p]roceedings and records of the [DOL] with respect to workers' compensation claims," DOL declined to comply with the request. In response, the petitioner revised its request so that it no longer requested the employee's name and insurer claim number. DOL again declined to comply with the petitioner's request. Thereafter, the petitioner filed its petition against DOL and respondent New Hampshire Treasury, seeking disclosure of "all documents relating to disbursements from the Second Injury Fund occurring in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 . . . with all employee names and insurer claim numbers redacted." At the hearing on the respondents' motion to dismiss the petition, the petitioner agreed to limit its request further to certain information available

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on two forms kept by DOL, the "WCSIF-2A", which is a schedule of reimbursable payments, and the "9WCA," which is an application for reimbursement of disability payments. At the hearing, the petitioner agreed that employee names, social security numbers, home addresses and average weekly wages could be redacted from these forms. The information the petitioner sought was limited to: the identity of the employer, the identity of the insurance carrier, the date of injury, the amount the second injury fund paid to the carrier, and the date on which the second injury fund agreed to reimburse the carrier. The trial court dismissed the petition, and this appeal followed. Resolving the issues on appeal requires that we interpret the Right

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