Case Detail
| Case Title | TOENSING et al v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | District of Columbia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Washington, DC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2011cv01215 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2011-06-30 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2013-11-14 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge Beryl A. Howell | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | VICTORIA TOENSING | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | JOSEPH E. DIGENOVA | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Opinion/Order [21] FOIA Project Annotation: Judge Beryl Howell has ruled that a requester cannot resurrect a request after the time limit for filing an administrative appeal has passed by simply making the same request again, but, rather, is bound by the parameters of the original agency decision. Howell concluded that "when withholding decisions are made in an unexhausted request, a subsequent, identical request cannot cure a prior failure to exhaust because withholding decisions in particular 'involve [the] exercise of the agency's discretionary power [and] allow the agency to apply its special expertise.'" She added that "the alternative would be to require an agency faced with a duplicative FOIA request to reassess any previous withholding decisions made within the scope of the duplicative request. Yet, withholding decisions are often the most labor-intensive and complicated aspect of an agency's FOIA response efforts. Thus, after agency employees have already processed a FOIA request and made withholding decisions, requiring the same or yet another agency employee to plow the same ground all over again, while a backlog of requesters remain waiting for attention, is not an efficient use of agency resources. Holding otherwise would potentially allow a small group of FOIA requesters to hold an agency's resources hostage with a constant barrage of FOIA spam in the form of duplicative requests, compelling de novo reassessment of the same withholding decisions ad infinitum. Agency resources are not unlimited, and thus allowing requesters to monopolize scarce agency resources in this wayâ€"through filing duplicative requests where the records are staticâ€"would also disservice the purpose of the FOIA because every minute spent giving de novo reassessment to a duplicative request is a minute not spent processing new requests and disclosing new, previously undisclosed records." The case involved a series of FOIA requests stretching over a period of three and a half years submitted by the husband/wife attorneys Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing. The two were involved in representing Thomas Gordon, the Executive of New Castle County, Delaware, who was being investigated by the Delaware Attorney General for misuse of government funds. In September 2002, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware opened an investigation of Gordon and Sherry Freebery, a New Castle County administrative officer. Toensing and diGenova were subpoenaed to testify. The two attorneys moved to quash the subpoenas, which were eventually vacated as moot. Toensing and diGenova alleged the U.S. attorney engaged in prosecutorial misconduct during the investigation, particularly an attempt to secretly record a conversation that Toensing had with a New Castle County employee. Toensing and diGenova's first FOIA requests were sent to EOUSA and the Justice Department's Criminal Division in June 2007 seeking all records pertaining to their subpoenas. EOUSA found 675 pages and released 306 of them. The Criminal Division located 410 pages and disclosed 18 pages. Toensing and diGenova did not file an administrative appeal for either request. In February 2008, Toensing submitted a request to EOUSA for records pertaining to any tapes made during the investigation of Toensing. EOUSA forwarded this request to the U.S. Attorney in Delaware, which responded that it had no records. Again, Toensing did not file an administrative appeal. In February 2009, the two attorneys submitted requests to EOUSA and the Criminal Division asking for records pertaining to the subpoena. The two acknowledged that these requests were duplicative of their prior requests. The agencies conducted another search and told Toensing and diGenova that no further records were found. This time the two attorneys appealed the agency's decision, which was upheld by the Office of Information Policy. In December 2010, the two attorneys once again requested the subpoena records from EOUSA, the Criminal Division, and the FBI. This time, EOUSA and the Criminal Division did not respond before Toensing and diGenova filed suit. The two attorneys appealed the FBI's no records response, but OIP closed the appeal once the case went to litigation. Howell first considered whether Toensing and diGenova had sufficiently exhausted their administrative remedies to allow her to consider the entire scope of their requests. Finding the two attorneys had not adequately exhausted their administrative remedies, she pointed out that "allowing the plaintiffs now to use their 2010 requests as the vehicle to challenge the adequacy of the EOUSA's searches performed in response to the 2007 and 2008 requests and the propriety of the defendant's 2007 and 2008 withholding decisionsâ€"in spite of the plaintiffs' failure to file administrative appeals of the agency's responses to their identical 2007 and 2008 FOIA requestsâ€"would clearly frustrate the FOIA administrative scheme generally, as well as the defendant's particular scheme for processing FOIA requests." She added that "indeed, the course taken by the plaintiffs could be viewed as an end run around the FOIA's and the defendant's administrative exhaustion requirements because, if the plaintiffs' course were generally available, FOIA requesters who failed to exhaust their administrative remedies the first time around could routinely cure any failure to exhaust by simply filing a subsequent duplicative request seeking the same records." She indicated that "the plaintiffs waived their right to object to the agency's responses in 2007 and 2008 by failing to file a timely (or even untimely) administrative appeal, and a minor change to administrative policy guidance such as [the 2009 Holder memorandum] does not serve as a post hoc antidote to such a waiver." After reviewing Hidalgo v. FBI, 344 F.3d 1256 (D.C. Cir. 2003) and Wilbur v. CIA, 355 F.3d 675 (D.C. Cir. 2004), the two leading D.C. Circuit decisions on exhaustion, Howell explained that "from Wilbur and Hidalgo, a clear principle emerges: Failure to exhaust administrative remedies is not a mere technicality, and a court must decline to decide the merits of an unexhausted FOIA claim when the plaintiff fails to comply with procedures for administrative review, denying the agency an opportunity to review its initial determination, apply its expertise, correct any errors, and create an ample record in the process." Howell found that the plaintiffs' 2009 appeal to OIP related back to the adequacy of DOJ's original searches in 2007 and 2008 and that, since OIP had implicitly found those searches adequate, Toensing and diGenova had properly exhausted their administrative remedies related to the search. But she concluded that because the 2009 appeal did not consider any withholding decisions made in 2007 or 2008, those issues were not properly before the court. She pointed out that "the plaintiffs failed to cure the procedural defects in their 2007 and 2008 requests; namely, in their 2009 and 2010 FOIA requests, the plaintiffs never identified the defendant's 2007 and 2008 withholding decisions as a basis for their appeals. Therefore, the defendant never reviewed the merits of those withholding decisions through an administrative appealâ€"a fundamental prerequisite for judicial review." She observed that "allowing the plaintiffs now to challenge the defendant's 2007 and 2008 withholding decisions (and the sufficiency of the resulting Vaughn indices) when the agency did not have the opportunity for de novo administrative review, due to the plaintiff's failure to appeal the 2007 and 2008 withholding decisions, would directly undermine the purposes and policies underlying the administrative exhaustion doctrine. Inexplicably, the defendant does not raise exhaustion as a basis for dismissing any of the plaintiffs' claims. Nevertheless, the Court holds that the plaintiff's claims in this action may not extend beyond the issues properly appealed to and decided by the agency in conjunction with the 2009 and 2010 requests."
Opinion/Order [37]Issues: Request - Perfected request FOIA Project Annotation: Judge Beryl Howell has ruled that the Justice Department properly withheld five documents concerning subpoenas issued to attorneys Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova pertaining to a client who was being investigated by a federal grand jury under Exemption 5 (privileges) and one under Exemption 3 (other statutes). Toensing and diGenova argued that because DOJ attorneys acted improperly in taping interviews and trying to get them disqualified to represent their client EOUSA's claims that the records were protected by the attorney work product privilege did not apply. However, Howell pointed out that the application of the attorney work product privilege in the FOIA context depended entirely on whether the documents qualified under the privilege and that concerns about improprieties in their creation were irrelevant. Howell explained that the Supreme Court in FTC v. Grolier, 462 U.S. 19 (1983), concluded work product privileged documents remained protected under Exemption 5 unless they were routinely disclosable. Even if privileged documents had been disclosed to a specific party during litigation based on a showing of need, those documents continued to be privileged for FOIA purposes. She noted that "while attorney misconduct or unprofessional behavior may vitiate the work product doctrine in some circumstances, in the FOIA context, such an argument is unavailing." She indicated that after Grolier "courts must determine if 'the documents would be "routinely" or "normally" disclosed upon a showing of relevance.' Quite simply, whether the people who created these documents engaged in some misconduct or failed to comply with Department of Justice guidelines is irrelevant to determining whether the documents are appropriately withheld under Exemption 5, since exceptions to discovery privileges are not properly considered under Exemption 5." The plaintiffs contended that the agency's Vaughn index was inadequate to support its claim of the attorney work product privilege because it did not contain the date on which the record was created or the name of the author of the document. Again, Howell pointed out that "in the instant matter, the dates of the documents and the names of their authors are irrelevant to a determination of whether the documents are protected as attorney work product. Each document is identified as having been prepared by Department of Justice attorneys and each document's description adequately explains the nature of the document and why it is subject to the privilege. Thus, the defendant has shown, based on the supplemental Vaughn index provided, that [the five documents] would be shielded as attorney work product in civil litigation, barring vitiation due to an exception or other circumstances, and, as such, are exempt from disclosure under the FOIA." Howell found the sixth document was protected by Rule 6(e) on grand jury secrecy. Toensing and diGenova argued that they had been improperly subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury and that the subpoena had been made public during their litigation to quash the subpoena. Howell rejected the claim, noting that "the plaintiffs' belief that they were wrongly subpoenaed is simply irrelevant to the applicability of exemptions under the FOIA. . .[T]he plaintiffs' argument would allow the release, under the FOIA, of grand jury records pertaining to an indictment or grand jury subpoena as soon as either such document was made public, a result not sanctioned under the limited disclosure exceptions set out in Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e)(3)."
Issues: Exemption 5 - Privileges - Attorney work-product privilege | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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