Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

Court records are generally open to the public. There are some exceptions, in California. For example, records of marital dissolutions are available only to the parties and their counsel and juvenile cases are seldomly open to the public. In virtually any case, a party can ask the court to seal the file or keep it confidential.

For your information, there is a cause of action for damages, arising out of someone's publicly disclosing facts which, ordinarily, would be private. This is a difficult action to sustain, however, against a newspaper, which has a great deal of latitude on what it is allowed to report. Also, if the person who is the subject of the quote is a public figure, then there is very little protection of his or her privacy rights.