Case Detail
| Case Title | JUDICIAL WATCH, INC. v. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | District of Columbia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Washington, DC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 1:2019cv00876 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2019-03-27 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2021-03-12 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge Trevor N. McFadden | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | JUDICIAL WATCH, INC. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Description | Judicial Watch submitted FOIA requests to the FDA and the National Institute for Health for records concerning contracts between the agency and Advanced Biosciences Resources for provision of human fetal tissue to be used in humanized mice research. Both agencies acknowledged receipt of the requests, but after hearing nothing further from either agency, Judicial Watch filed suit. Complaint issues: Failure to respond within statutory time limit, Adequacy - Search, Litigation - Vaughn index, Litigation - Attorney's fees | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Complaint attachment 3 Complaint attachment 4 Opinion/Order [25] FOIA Project Annotation: Judicial Watch challenged the Exemption 4 claims. Referring to the agencies' involvement as "bloody business" and noting that the government had participated "in this potentially illicit trade for years," McFadden indicated emphatically that Exemption 4 did not apply, apparently informed in part by his belief that the contract was almost certainly illegal. McFadden started by rejecting the agencies' claim that the records did not reflect on government operations or activities and instead were about a private company. However, he noted that "here, ABR was a supplier of human body parts to the Government and thus is implicated in the Government's activities. They were business partners. Judicial Watch wants to know how the Government used taxpayer dollars participating in this trade. This is a far cry from when the Government only acquires private documents through its role as a regulator or law maker." Judicial Watch challenged the agencies' claims that the names and addresses of ABR's contract laboratories constituted commercial information under Exemption 4 and that unit prices and line-item amounts in contracts between ABR and the government were confidential under Exemption 4. McFadden agreed with Judicial Watch on both counts. McFadden found that declarations supplied by the agencies and ABR did not provide sufficient evidence that the names and addresses of contract laboratories were actually commercial. The FDA's declaration talked only in terms of whether ABR could consider such information as commercial. But McFadden indicated that "if speculation sufficed, this litany would be fine. But the supplemental declaration says nothing about why ABR in fact has a commercial interest in the names and addresses of its contract labs." He explained that ABR's declaration was no more helpful. He pointed out that its "conclusory assertions do not suggest to the Court, even at the highest level of generality, why ABR has a commercial interest in the information." He observed that "the Government has not met its burden to show that the names and addresses of ABR's contract labs are commercial in nature." He pointed out that "it was even more important for the Government (or ABR) to address the commercial nature of the names and addresses, given that this type of information is not obviously commercial." He faulted the government and ABR for their lack of supporting detail. He noted that "it bears repeating that this could have been a different case had the Government or ABR adequately explained themselves. But they did not. And ABR did not intervene to defend its interests, as companies have in similar cases. FOIA favors disclosure, and the burden to avoid disclosure rests with the Government. It did not meet that burden here." Turning to the question of whether the agencies had shown that ABR's prices were confidential, McFadden pointed out that "Judicial Watch does not appear to dispute that, in general, unit pricing could be confidential information. It instead argues that the pricing information is no longer confidential." He explained that "recall that Judicial Watch seeks unit pricing for the years 2013-2018. Judicial Watch contends that this information is in the public domain in two ways: (a) for 2013-2015 records, through fee schedules appended to a report released by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee; and (b) for 2016-2018 records, through the Government's disclosures in responding to this FOIA request." The Senate Judiciary Committee had investigated whether ABR and other tissue suppliers had violated 42 U.S.C. § 289g-2, which prohibits the transfer of human fetal tissue "for valuable consideration," an amount over the reasonable payment for associated costs. The report concluded that ABR "received payments for fetal tissue specimens far in excess of their demonstrates costs of the allowable categories." Attached to the report were ABR's fee schedules for 2010-2015. McFadden explained that "the Court finds that the fee schedules appended to the Committee's report are enough to put the information that Judicial Watch seeks for the 2013-2015 years in the public domain." Although the agencies argued that the fee schedules did not contain the exact information requested by Judicial Watch, McFadden found the information was a sufficient match. He observed that "the unit pricing information for human fetal tissue as well as shipping and other costs disclose in the Judiciary Committee report fee schedules â€" corresponding with the 2013-2015 years â€" is thus in the public domain." McFadden then found that information disclosed by NIH in response to Judicial Watch's request also matched the information that agency had withheld under Exemption 4. The agencies argued that to constitute an official acknowledgment the information had to be, for al practical purposes, identical. But McFadden observed that "the public-domain doctrine does not require the Court to favor form over substance. Binding caselaw shows that the relevant inquiry is whether the information is in the public domain, not whether it is also in precisely the same form." Rejecting the agencies' arguments to the contrary, McFadden noted that "even though these materials might have disclosed unit pricing in a different form, that does not mean that the information is not in the public domain." In concluding, McFadden indicated that the agency had dodged a bullet because failing to provide sufficient evidence to support its exemption claims meant that he did not have to address Judicial Watch's assertion that ABR had engaged in criminal activity. He noted, however, that "the Court is dubious of the Government's argument that the exception could not apply here."
Issues: Exemption 4 - Confidential business information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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