Sikes v. U.S. Dep't of the Navy (S.D. Ga.) -- denying award of attorney’s fees to plaintiff who substantially prevailed before Eleventh Circuit, because public benefit of obtaining duplicate documents was “very limited” and agency’s actions were not unreasonable.
Judge Rotenberng Educ. Ctrv. v. FDA (D.D.C.) -- ruling that: (1) agency improperly withheld information as “non-responsive” by reclassifying documents as distinct records midway through litigation; (2) plaintiff conceded agency’s attorney-client privilege claims by failing to reply to agency’s counter-arguments; (3) agency’s Vaughn Index inadequately described certain deliberative process privilege withholdings, e.g., by failing to identify decision-making authority of authors and recipients of agency communications, but agency properly withheld draft documents; (4) agency failed to properly identify privacy and public interests of third parties whose identities were withheld pursuant to Exemption 6.
Summaries of all published opinions issued since April 2015 are available here.