A ruling in the divorce case of former supermodel Christie Brinkley is an encouraging sign that judges are not going to use the rapid information flow of the digital age as an excuse to close court proceedings.

Brinkley's case is set for trial July 2 in Suffolk County (N.Y.) Supreme Court with child custody among the issues she is contesting with estranged husband Peter Cook. The couple have a 10-year-old daughter and Cook also adopted Brinkley's 13-year-old son from a previous marriage.

The trial is expected to feature testimony about Cook's affair with an 18-year-old girl and the children's attorney, Theresa A. Mari, requested in a pretrial motion that the courtroom be closed during proceedings related to the child custody issue.

While Brinkley opposed the motion, Cook supported Mari, citing the negative effect that media coverage of the trial would have on his children.

In a June 20 decision, Acting Supreme Court Justice Mark D. Cohen noted that both Mari and Cook's attorney

argue that [the] “new age” of the media, i.e. the bloggersphere, requires this Court ... to be more attuned to the rapid dissemination of potentially damaging information.

But he denied the closure motion, finding Mari had failed to make the “proper evidentiary showing” establishing that the children needed to be protected from publicity.

“The fact that information may be transferred at the press of a key cannot alter the analysis,” Cohen wrote. “Here, the submissions in support of closure wholly fail to provide any evidentiary showing, but rely simply upon conjecture of harm to the children.”

New York case law requires judges to strike “the proper 'balance [between] the right of access of the public and the press to judicial proceedings [and] the ... interest in protecting children from the possible harmful effects of disclosing [harmful information] to the public.”

One exception to the general rule of open courtrooms was a child custody dispute involving the family of then-child actor Macauley Culkin. But that case, as a New York appeals court said in Anonymous v. Anonymous, 263 A.D.2d 341 (2000), “involved allegations of drug and alcohol abuse and domestic violence, resulting in emotional and educational harm to the children that ... had been 'explicitly documented.'”

Mari was, in effect, suggesting a shift toward preventing the disclosure of harmful information simply because bloggers can make the information instantaneously available. To his credit, Justice Cohen was more “attuned” to the benefits of public access.

“Open courtrooms, in general and in divorce actions, may provide a basis for societal education,” he said. The trial, “open or closed, will generate large-scale public and media interest,” he recognized, and having an open courtroom would at least “facilitate a transparent process, rather than reporting based on speculation and hearsay.”

Brinkley's attorney has said that only full disclosure will repair her reputation. She could also be using the threat of public embarrassment to leverage a settlement from Cook, who, according to his lawyer, wants custody of the children and “thinks he's a better parent.”