Alaska Employment Law

The U. S. Forest Service made a series of incomplete, misleading, and possibly bad faith disclosures in response to an FOIA request.  It eventually produced an e-mail in which an agency employee advised recipients to destroy documents because they were subject to disclosure.  When the FOIA requester asked the agency to certify that its disclosures were now complete, the agency failed to do so, and opposed the requester’s motion to require such.  

U. S. District Judge John Sedwick has now ordered the agency to produce the certification, and granted the requester’s (unopposed) motion for attorney fees.

Sedwick held:

before it may dismiss the FOIA claims, the Forest Service must properly certify its production by filing a nonconclusory affidavit which provides a relatively detailed description of the files searched and the search procedures used, affirms that each document identified as responsive to Ms. Ith’s FOIA request has been produced in its entirety or placed on a privilege log, avers that all previously withheld documents from the privilege log which are subject to production have been produced in their entirety, and states that the affidavit is submitted in good faith.

Ith v. U. S. Forest Service, 2009 WL 1664495 (D.Alaska June 12, 2009)

Peter Van Tuyn represents the plaintiff; Gary Guarino, AUSA, represents the agency.  Both practice in Anchorage.