When it comes to statutory interpretation, punctuation and structure still matter.
In US Right to Know v. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the North Carolina Court of Appeals relied on the last-antecedent canon in holding that N.C. Gen. Stat. § 116‑43.17 categorically exempts research data and research records from disclosure, while research information is only exempt if it was “of a proprietary nature.”
The Dispute
US Right to Know (USRTK), a nonprofit focused on public‑health transparency, submitted multiple public‑records requests to UNC Chapel Hill seeking documents related to coronavirus research conducted by Dr. Ralph Baric and his collaborators. UNC produced more than 130,000 pages but withheld approximately 5,200 documents under several exemptions, including the research‑materials exemption in § 116‑43.17. The statute exempts “research data, records, or information of a proprietary nature.”
The Grammar That Drove the Decision
The question was whether the final phrase—“of a proprietary nature”—applied only to “information,” or instead to all three listed nouns. The Court treated this as a classic application of the “last‑antecedent canon,” under which a trailing modifier ordinarily applies only to the term it immediately follows.
The Court explained that the structure and punctuation of the statute placed “of a proprietary nature” directly after “information,” and nothing in the syntax suggested that the phrase reached back across the entire list. The Court relied on decisions from the Supreme Court of the United States and from the North Carolina Supreme Court, which construed similar series in the same way.
The Court also noted that the General Assembly had drafted other Public Records Act exemptions differently when it intended “proprietary” to modify multiple terms; that contrast supported the narrower reading here.
USRTK urged the Court to apply the “series‑qualifier canon” instead, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Facebook v. Duguid. But the Court observed that the language at issue in Facebook involved a single integrated clause followed by a modifier separated by a comma. The comma in that decision was key because it signaled that the modifier applied to the entire clause. Section 116‑43.17 lacked that structure.
Although the statute did not define “proprietary nature,” the court gave the phrase its ordinary meaning, which encompassed a range of ownership‑based interests, including but not limited to trade secrets.
Significance
From a practical perspective, the decision strengthened universities’ ability to withhold research data and records before publication or patenting, while confirming that research information required a showing of some protectable ownership interest. For public‑records requesters, disputes are likely to shift toward classification—what counts as “data,” what counts as “records,” and where “information” begins.
But the enduring importance of the case lay in the interpretive approach. The Court treated punctuation as purposeful and applied the last‑antecedent canon with discipline, illustrating how a dispute over access to high‑profile scientific materials could be resolved through ordinary tools of grammar.
