Clean Air Council v. U.S. Dep't of the Interior (E.D. Pa.) -- determining that: (1) case was not collaterally estopped by state agency’s decision that one company-intervenor’s feasibility studies were confidential under state open records law, because federal FOIA’ standards were different and plaintiff did not have a “full and fair opportunity” to litigate the federal government’s Exemption 4 claims before the state agency; and (2) affidavits submitted by intervenors and federal government to justify Exemption 4 withholdings did not sufficiently describe the steps that company-intervenors “customarily” took to keep the type of information at issue confidential; further noting that parties had not executed a separate confidentiality agreement and that their final contract stated that certain information could be publicly released via statutorily-required compliance reviews; and (3) defendants failed to establish that disputed records were submitted with government’s express or implicit assurance of privacy, rejecting argument that procurement regulations providing confidentiality to “source selection” records applied in this case.
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