From In re Marriage of Patel & Yendru, decided Friday by the Kansas Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Justice Stephen Hill, joined by Justice Kathryn Gardner and District Judge Joan Lowdon:
The work of our courts is public business, but not all of that business should be made public. There are reasonable limits to the public disclosures of some court records. Trade secrets, military secrets, and facts that their revelation would serve no other purpose but to promote scandal and public embarrassment may be protected from public scrutiny. Thus, by law, a court may seal some court records….
Patel [the mother] and Yendru [the father], who are both successful doctors in the Wichita area, divorced in 2011 when their child, A.Y., was four years old…. In May 2024, A.Y. was set to graduate high school, and the graduation fell on Yendru's weekend for parenting time. Patel requested that she have A.Y. at her house from Thursday-Sunday of graduation weekend; Patel had already scheduled a party with A.Y.'s friends on that Saturday and A.Y. knew of the event. On March 26, the case manager recommended that the parents split the weekend—Friday and Saturday with Patel; Sunday and Monday with Yendru….
Yendru objected …. [His motion] included a portion with the heading "Special Circumstances" in which Yendru alleged improper conduct by Patel for events that occurred 13 years before the motion was heard. It is this special circumstance portion of the record that is sealed….
