Case Detail
| Case Title | GRAND CANYON TRUST v. ZINKE et al | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | District of Columbia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Washington, DC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2017cv00849 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2017-05-09 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2018-05-24 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | GRAND CANYON TRUST | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Description | The Grand Canyon Trust submitted a FOIA request to the Department of the Interior for records concerning a 2016 Secretarial Order entitled Discretionary Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement to Modernize the Federal Coal Program. The agency disclosed 222 pages and told the Trust that it had located 8,000 potentially responsive records that would be processed and disclosed on a rolling basis. However, the agency subsequently told the Trust that information submitted by two energy companies had been sent out for pre-disclosure notification and that its request was now in the complex queue. The Trust also submitted a FOIA request to the Bureau of Land Management for the records. BLM told the Trust that it would probably take a year to process its request. After several further inquiries were unsuccessful, the Grand Canyon Trust filed suit. Complaint issues: Failure to respond within statutory time limit, Litigation - Attorney's fees | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | RYAN ZINKE Secretary of the Interior, in his official capacity | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Appeal | D.C. Circuit 18-5232 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Complaint attachment 3 Complaint attachment 4 Complaint attachment 5 Complaint attachment 6 Opinion/Order [21] FOIA Project Annotation: Judge Beryl Howell has ruled that the Grand Canyon Trust is not entitled to attorney's fees for its litigation against the Department of the Interior for records concerning policies pertaining to oil and gas leases on federal lands because its suit did not cause the agency to disclose more than 60,000 pages. The Grand Canyon Trust submitted FOIA requests to the Office of the Secretary and the Bureau of Land Management. The Trust filed suit after the agency failed to disclose any records within the statutory time limit. One month after the complaint was filed, OS disclosed 6,366 pages without any court involvement. Two months after that, BLM disclosed a total of 58,987 pages, again without any court involvement. The Grand Canyon Trust then requested $68,047 in attorney's fees. Noting that the question before the court was whether the litigation was necessary to obtain the requested documents, Howell observed that "the plaintiff has not met this standard. Rather, the evidence submitted by plaintiff in support of its fee motion makes clear that both the DOI-OS and BLM had begun processing the plaintiff's request well before this lawsuit was initiated and that both agencies had even made partial responses to the plaintiff before the complaint was filed. Both agencies completed their disclosures within four months of the start of litigation, and these disclosures were satisfactory to the plaintiff." She pointed out that "DOI-OS and BLM had backlogs of 33 and 153 requests respectively. . . The plaintiff's exhibits in support of its fee motion reflect the agencies' preexisting backlog and show that, despite these backlogs, the agencies' FOIA offices diligently worked to satisfy the plaintiff's requests. Thus, the plaintiff has not established that the threat of an adverse court order prompted the disclosures ultimately made in this case. Instead, the record shows that 'an unavoidable delay accompanied by due diligence in the administrative process was the actual reason for the agencies' failure to respond to [the] request.'" Citing Piper v. Dept of Justice, 339 F. Supp. 2d 13 (D.D.C. 2004), the Grand Canyon Trust argued that the agency's lack of countervailing evidence undercut its position. Noting that Piper dealt with a dispute on rates charged, Howell observed that "neither rates nor calculations nor hours billed is at issue [here], given that the plaintiff has failed to establish eligibility for attorney's fees. Accordingly, the defendants' lack of supporting declarations does not warrant an award of fees for the plaintiff." She explained that "the Senate Judiciary Committee Report accompanying the FOIA noted that 'if the government is forced to pay attorney's fees even if it settles a lawsuit without court action. . .then we may well find that the government is less inclined to settle FOIA lawsuits.' The parties in this case likewise were able to resolve all document production issues without the Court's involvement and 'although it would have been ideal for the defendant to process the plaintiff's request from the very beginning, the government's compliance with the plaintiff's request so early in the litigation is not the sort of agency behavior that Congress intended to prevent by awarding attorney's fees.'"
Issues: Litigation - Attorney's fees - Prevailing party | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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