Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Forest Serv. (D.D.C.) -- finding that: (1) federal contractor’s appraisal of a land exchange between the government and defendant-intervenor, a private mining company, qualified as an “agency record” because the agency “constructively controlled” the appraisal based on the four-factor test set forth in Burka v. HHS, 87 F.3d 508 (D.C. Cir. 1996); using the same test, finding that the contractor’s documents containing data underlying the appraisal were not agency records; (2) agency justified withholding information that would result in foreseeable economic harm to defendant-intervenor, but offered only inadmissible hearsay as to whether withheld information that would result in foreseeable harms to the appraiser and third-party experts’ business interests; (3) agency properly invoked Exemption 5’s deliberative process privilege to withhold the appraisal, summary, and technical report as pre-decisional and deliberative, but rejecting the reasonableness of the harms foreseen by the agency; and (4) agency’s segregability analysis was insufficient because the agency inconsistently processed an appraisal summary and a technical report.
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