Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Road Maint. Assn. Member Addresses

The phrase "public information" is a little imprecise and ambiguous. It could mean information that is contained in an official public record, such as the tax rolls; or it could mean information that a member of the public could readily discover, as by searching on Google. It could also have other meanings.

I'm going to assume that you are trying to find the name or names of members of your road association, or that you already know their names but want to associate them with particular addresses.

My answer then would be that I cannot think of any place where the list of member names and addresses of the Bumpy Road Maintenance Association (BRMA) would be published. On the other hand, you could fairly easily find out that John and Jane Doe are the owners of the house located at 123 Bumpy Rd., or, searching using the names and finding the address, or vice-versa. If you are willing to assume that everyone who lives on Bumpy Rd. must be a member, like it or not, you could compile a list of all members. It might not be 100% accurate.

If your concern is your own privacy, i.e. that someone published a list showing that you were a member of the BRMA and want to know if this were already "public information" in the context of it being an unreasonable invasion of a privacy right, my answer would be that if you live on Bumpy Rd. the release of your name and/or address as a BRMA member is probably not a privacy invasion because the information could probably be ascertained from records available to the public, even though one must still make an inference or assumption of membership based on the fact of residence location.