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Nature of Suit Code: 895
Nature of Suit: Freedom of Information Act of 1974
Cause of Action: 

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UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Fs~~rtotlpP8&\f United 'renth Circuit 

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT 

NANCY L. TRENERRY, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY; INTERNAL 

REVENUE SERVICE, 

Defendants-Appellees. 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

FEBO 5 1993 

ROBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

No. 92-5053 

(D . C. No. 90-C-0444-B) 

(N.D. Okla.) 

Before BALDOCK and SETH, Circuit Judges, and BABCOCK,** District 

Judge. 

**Honorable Lewis T. Babcock, District Judge, 

District Court for the District of Colorado, 

designation. 

United States 

sitting by 

After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel 

has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially 

assist the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 

34(a) ; 10th Cir. R. 34.1.9. 

submitted without oral argument. 

The case is therefore ordered 

* This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall 

not be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit , except for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of 

the case, res judicata, or collateral estoppel . 10th Cir. R. 

36.3. 

Appellate Case: 92-5053 Document: 010110166200 Date Filed: 02/05/1993 Page: 1 
Plaintiff Nancy L. Trenerry appeals the district court's 

grant of summary judgment in favor of the Internal Revenue Service 

on all of her claims under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) , 

5 U.S.C. § 552. We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand 

for further proceedings. 

Trenerry's complaint asserted that IRS wrongfully withheld 

documents she sought under ten FOIA requests, which her complaint 

categorized as ten separate causes of action. IRS filed a motion 

to dismiss or, in the alternative, for summary judgment, alleging 

that it had released all responsive documents to Trenerry, and 

that in any event she had failed to exhaust her administrative 

remedies for certain of her requests. In response, Trenerry 

contended that IRS had not provided her with all responsive 

documents for five of her ten requests, that she had exhausted all 

of her administrative remedies, and that IRS and its counsel 

should be sanctioned. 

The district court treated IRS's motion as one for summary 

judgment and dismissed as moot the five causes of action for which 

Trenerry did not challenge IRS's motion (second, fourth, seventh, 

eighth, and ninth requests), concluding that IRS had provided her 

with all requested materials. The court then found that for the 

remaining five requests IRS eit~er provided Trenerry with all 

requested documents or properly refused to conduct legal research 

to identify documents covered by Trenerry's requests. The court 

concluded that Trenerry did not raise a genuine issue of fact 

preventing summary judgment as to any of her ten causes of action. 

Because it found that IRS provided all requested documents to 

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Trenerry, the court did not address whether Trenerry exhausted her 

administrative remedies . 

On appeal, Trenerry contends that the district court 

incorrectly determined that there were no issues of fact as to 

whether IRS provided her with all documents requested by five of 

her requests, failed to conduct a de nova review of IRS ' s 

responses to her requests, and failed to award her costs as to the 

five causes of action she did not challenge . 

Our initial inquiry is whether the district court had an 

adequate factual basis on which to base its decision. Anderson v. 

Department of Health & Human Servs., 907 F.2d 936, 942 (10th Cir. 

1990). Because the district court granted summary judgment in 

favor of a government agency, we review the court's conclusions de 

nova . Id. We first address the five causes of action on which 

Trenerry challenged whether IRS provided all documents she 

requested . 

Trenerry's first request sought copies of "TRAINING 2236-01 

(ADP & IDRS Training Instructor's Guide)" and "TRAINING 2236-02 

(ADP & IDRS Student Training Course Book)." Record, doc. 6, 

attach. A. The request further stated that "[i]f the above 

requested material has been renamed, renumbered or redesignated, 

please consider this request as seeking that information under its 

respective current name, number, form or system. " Id. IRS sent 

her copies of the specifically requested documents dated July 1981 

and told her there had been no "revisions or updates" to t his 

material . Id. , attach. I. IRS also informed her that "the 

training documents were created solely for s upport of 

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collections ADP/IDRS training and the documents may or may not 

reflect current (or past) IRS procedures." Id. 

Trenerry contends that what IRS sent her did not fulfill her 

request because what she was actually seeking was "current 

instructions to staff and current training material pertaining t o 

ADP and IDRS training." Appellant's br. at 5. We agree wi th the 

district court that the materials IRS sent her satisfied her 

request . Her request was for specific documents and is not 

broadly draft ed as she contends. IRS's obligation was to read 

Trenerry's request as drafted, not as she might have wishe d it 

were drafted. See Miller v. Casey , 730 F.2d 773 , 776-77 (D.C . 

Cir.1984). 

Trenerry's third request sought numerical and subject indices 

for each part, chapter and handbook, including ADP handbooks, f or 

the Internal Revenue Manual. 

supported by the declaration 

IRS contended in its motion, 

of Gerard Gal lick, that it provided 

Trenerry with cumulative indices for the Internal Revenue Manual 

and other responsive documents and that these documents met 

Trenerry's request . Trenerry responded with her declaration 

listing thirty indices or parts of indices that she claimed she 

had either not received, were obsolete, or were illegible . The 

district court found that Trenerry had failed to present any 

evidence to dispute Gallick's declaration and that IRS had 

provided her with all requested indices. 

On the record before us, we cannot agree with the district 

court that there are no issues of fact as to whether IRS satisfied 

Trene rry's third request. The Eighth Circuit has wel l summarized 

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Appellate Case: 92-5053 Document: 010110166200 Date Filed: 02/05/1993 Page: 4 
the law regarding an agency's burden in seeking summary judgment 

in a FOIA case: 

Summary judgment is available to the defendant in a 

FOIA case when the agency proves that it has fully 

discharged its obligations under FOIA, after the 

underlying facts and the inferences to be drawn from 

them are construed in the light most favorable to the 

FOIA requester. Weisberg v . U.S. Department of Justice, 

705 F . 2d 1344, 1350 (D.C. Cir. 1983). In order to 

discharge this burden, the agency "must prove that each 

document that falls within the class requested either 

has been produced, is unidentifiable, or is wholly 

exempt from the Act's inspection requirements." 

National Cable Television Ass'n, Inc . v. Federal 

Communications Comm'n, 479 F.2d 183, 186 (D.C. Cir. 

1973). The adequacy of an agency's search for requested 

documents is judged by a standard of reasonableness, 

i.e., "the agency must show beyond material doubt 

that it has conducted a search reasonably calculated to 

uncover all relevant documents. " Weisberg. 705 F.2d at 

1351. But the search need only be reasonable; it does 

not have to be exhaustive . See, e.g . , Shaw v. U.S . 

Deoartment of State, 559 F. Supp. 1053, 1057 (D.D.C . 1983). An agency may prove the reasonableness of its 

search through affidavits of responsible agency 

officials so long as the affidavits are relatively 

detailed, nonconclusory, and submitted in good faith. 

Goland v. Central Intelligence Agency, 607 F.2d 339, 352 

{D.C. Cir. 1978) cert. denied, 445 U.S . 927, 100 S. Ct . 1312, 63 L.Ed.2d 759 (1980) . 

Miller v. United States Dep't of State, 779 F . 2d 1378, 1382-83 

{8th Cir. 1985) . 

Trenerry's contentions that she did not receive all of the 

indices she requested and that some of the ones she did receive 

were obsolete raised questions of fact concerning whether IRS 

fully complied with her request . IRS's motion and supporting 

evidence did not resolve these questions. Gallick's declaration 

lists various documents that IRS provided to Trenerry and states 

that certain documents were provided to her in response to an 

interrogatory she had earlier submitted indicati ng lack of receipt 

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Appellate Case: 92-5053 Document: 010110166200 Date Filed: 02/05/1993 Page: 5 
or legibility of certain documents. But that declaration 

generally does not address any of the questions Trenerry raised in 

her declaration. Gallick's declaration is nondetailed and 

conclusory and does not give any information by which we can judge 

the adequacy of IRS's search for responsive documents or whether 

IRS produced all responsive documents. Though the information IRS 

provided Trenerry may well have fully responded to her request, 

the record is not sufficient to resolve this issue on summary 

judgment. The district court's grant of summary judgment on 

Trenerry's third cause of action is therefore reversed. 

In her fifth and sixth requests, Trenerry sought all IRS 

Internal Management Documents concerning the preparation, 

processing, and filing of substitutes for returns, both in general 

and for the ones prepared for her in particular. She also 

requested documents showing all delegations of authority by which 

IRS administers the Internal Revenue Code. IRS refused to provide 

these documents on the basis that her request asked legal 

questions and would have required IRS to perform legal research to 

respond. The district court agreed with IRS. It stated that to 

fully comply with Trenerry's request, 

the IRS would have been required to research which IMDs, 

rules, regulations, and delegations of authority for 

administering the Internal Revenue Code were applicable 

to any action the IRS took concerning [Trenerry's] 

'substitute for returns.' The IRS is not required to 

provide [Trenerry] with personal services such as legal 

research. 

Record, doc. 26 at 8. 

We agree with the district court's general analysis. FOIA 

does not require IRS "to answer questions disguised as a FOIA 

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request." Hudgins v. Internal Revenue Serv., 620 F. Supp. 19, 21 

(D.D.C. 1985), aff'd, 808 F.2d 137 (D . C. Cir.), cert. denied, 484 

U.S. 803 (1987). Such questions are not "records" as that term is 

used in the FOIA. Id.; see also DiViaio v. Kelley. 571 F . 2d 538, 

542-43 (10th Cir. 1978) (defining records under FOIA as "that which 

is written or transcribed to perpetuate knowledge or events" and 

finding agency not required to respond to FOIA requests for 

documents that actually seek "answers to interrogatories" ). 

The district court was therefore correct in granting summary 

judgment with respect to most of the items contained in Trenerry's 

fifth and sixth requests. However, two of the items in Trenerry's 

sixth request do not fall in this category of "non-record" 

requests and appear to ask for specific documents. 

items request the following: 

These two 

8. A copy of the determination by the Secretary or his 

properly delegated authority that I had 'income which 

was taxable.'; ... 

10. A copy of the Notice(s) that were sent to me prior 

to the 'Exam' determination that 'substitute for 

returns' were to be made in my name for the years 1981, 

1982, 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1986[.] 

Record, doc. 6, attach. LL. Neither IRS nor the district court 

addressed these two specific items nor stated why there was an 

absence of a factual issue concerning IRS's response to these 

items. Therefore, summary judgment is reversed as to these two 

items only and affirmed as to the others in the fifth and sixth 

requests. 

In her tenth request, Trenerry sought for the years 1981 to 

1988, and for her in particular, copies of the records of 

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Appellate Case: 92-5053 Document: 010110166200 Date Filed: 02/05/1993 Page: 7 
assessment pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 6203, the summary records of 

assessment signed by the assessment officer with the supporting 

records pursuant to 26 C.F.R. § 301.6203-1, and the delegations of 

assessment authority and redelegations applicable to the 

assessment records. The Gallick declaration supporting IRS's 

motion stated that IRS fully complied with Trenerry's request by 

providing her with "Forms 4340 for tax years 1981 and 1982; Form 

23C for tax year 1981 ... ; Form 23C for tax year 1982 .. , 

Delegation Orders numbers AUSC 49 and AUSC 59 relating to the 

preparation of Forms 4340 and 23C; and an Individual Master File 

Transcript (IMF) for tax years 1981 through 1988." Record, 

doc. 13, Gallick Declaration at 9. The district court agreed that 

these documents satisfied Trenerry's request. The district court 

determined that her arguments to the contrary went to whether the 

documents satisfied the requirements of the appropriate statutes, 

and it held that Forms 4340 and 23C met the statutory 

requirements, citing United States v. Chila, 871 F.2d 1015, 1017 

(11th Cir.), cert . denied, 493 U.S. 975 (1989) . 

We have a more fundamental problem with the response to this 

request than whether the documents met the statutory requirements 

because based on the record before us, we cannot determine whether 

the documents generally satisfied Trenerry's request. Again, the 

problem stems from the nondetailed, conclusory Galli ck 

declaration. See Anderson, 907 F.2d at 942 (conclusory affidavits 

frustrate court's review of whether agency complied with request) . 

Nowhere in his declaration does Mr. Gallick discuss the search IRS 

undertook in response to Trenerry's request, much less show that 

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Appellate Case: 92-5053 Document: 010110166200 Date Filed: 02/05/1993 Page: 8 
it was reasonable, nor does he state that the documents provided 

were all of the documents discovered as a result of that search. 

We agree with Trenerry that the document IRS says is a Form 23C 

that satisfies part of her request does not indicate on it that it 

is a Form 23C; instead, it is identified as a "RACS REPORT- 00 6 , 

Surmnary Record of Assessment." Moreover, IRS never addressed 

Trenerry's request for records supporting the surmnary assessment . 

While the Chila case indicates that a "Certificate of Assessments 

and Payments," which is Form 4340's title, is a supporting record 

to the surmnary assessment, it also indicates that something called 

an "account card" is another supporting record. Chila, 871 F . 2d 

at 1017. Finally, the declaration does not state that the 

delegations of authority provided fully respond to the request . 

As a result, we cannot conclude that IRS met its burden of proving 

there are no factual issues as to whether it fully responded to 

Trenerry's request. We therefore reverse i ts grant of summary 

judgment with respect to the tenth cause of action. 

Trenerry also contends that the district court erred by 

failing to conduct a de novo review of IRS's response to her 

requests and by not permitting Trenerry to take discovery before 

granti ng IRS's motion . Trenerry is correct that a district court 

is required to review an agency's actions de novo, and the burden 

is on the agency to prove its actions complied with FOIA, 5 U.S.C. 

§ 552(a) (4 ) (B) ; see also Desalvo v. Internal Revenue Serv., 861 

F.2d 1217, 1221 (10th Cir. 1988). In its order, the district 

court did use the phrase "arbitrary and capricious," implying it 

was applying a more restricted standard of review. 

9 

Cf. Desalvo , 

Appellate Case: 92-5053 Document: 010110166200 Date Filed: 02/05/1993 Page: 9 
861 F.2d at 1218-19. However, reviewing the entire order clearly 

reveals that the court performed a de novo review and c orrectly 

placed the burden on IRS. 

We also find no error in the district court's refusal to 

allow Trenerry to take discovery, at least with respect to the 

requests on which we have affirmed the court's surmnary judgment 

grant. A district court "has the discretion to limit discovery in 

FOIA cases and to enter summary judgment on the basis of agency 

affidavits in a proper case . " Simmons v . United States Dep't o f 

Justice, 796 F . 2d 709, 711 - 12 (4th Cir. 1986) (citing Gol and, 60 7 

F . 2d at 352 ) ; see also Nolan v . United States Dep't o f Justice, 

973 F.2d 843, 849 (10th Cir. 1992) (court has broad discretion in 

controlling discovery process). On remand, the district court 

again has the discretion to determine whether discovery i s 

appropriate . 

Finally, Trenerry claims that the district court should have 

awarded her costs on the five causes of action she did not 

challenge on the basis she substantially prevailed on these 

claims. She also asserts that the district court failed to 

address her claim for cost refunds under her first and tenth 

requests and incorrectly levied costs against h er in its 

January 9, 1992, judgment. 

A court has discretion to assess reasonable litigation costs 

against a government agency where the FOIA plaintiff substantially 

prevails. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a) (4) (E); Aviation Data Serv. v. 

Federal Aviation Adrnin., 687 F.2d 1319, 1321 (10th Cir. 1982 ). 

The fact that Trenerry did not obtain an order directing IRS t o 

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release documents pursuant to her request because IRS eventually 

released the responsive documents does not prohibit her from 

recovery. A FOIA plaintiff is not barred from recovering 

litigation fees and costs "because the government acts to moot his 

claim before judgment is entered in his suit." Nationwide Bldg. 

Maintenance, Inc. v. Sampson, 559 F.2d 704, 709-10 {D.C. Cir. 

1977); accord Vermont Low Income Advocacy Council, Inc . v. Usery. 

546 F.2d 509, 513 (2d Cir. 1976); Crooker v. United States Dep't 

of Justice, 632 F.2d 916, 919 (1st Cir. 1980); Stein v. Dep't of 

Justice, 662 F.2d 1245, 1262 (7th Cir. 1981). 

If the government could avoid liability for fees merely 

b[y] conceding the case before final judgment, the 

impact of the fee provision would be greatly reduced. 

The government would remain free to assert boilerplate 

defenses, and private parties who served the public 

interest by enforcing the Act's mandates would be 

deprived of compensation for the undertaking. Thus, a 

general bar to awards of fees in cases resolved before 

final judgment cannot be accepted by the court. 

Nationwide Bldg. Maintenance, 559 F.2d at 710 (citation omitted). 

Eligibility to recover litigation costs does not mean 

Trenerry is entitled to such an award. A FOIA plaintiff must show 

that prosecution of the action was reasonably necessary to obtain 

the information and that there is a causal relationship between 

the action and the agency's release of information. Public Law 

Educ. Inst. v. United States Dep't of Justice, 744 F.2d 181 , 183 

(D .C. Cir. 1984). In addition, in exercising its discretion to 

award litigation costs, a court "should consider four factors or 

criteria as guidelines . (1) the benefit to the public, if 

any, derived from the case; (2) the commercial benefit to the 

complainant; (3) the nature of the complainant's interest in the 

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records sought and (4) whether the government's withholding of the 

records had a reasonable basis in the law." Aviation Data Serv., 

687 F.2d at 1321. 

In its order granting summary judgment, the district court 

did not address either Trenerry's claim for costs pursuant to 

5 U.S.C. § 552(a) (4) (E) or her claim for refunds. Because we are 

r emanding this case for further proceedings, we need not address 

these claims now. 

district court. 

Trenerry may re-raise these claims with the 

The judgment of the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Oklahoma is AFFIRMED in part, REVERSED in 

part, and REMANDED for further proceedings in accordance with this 

order and judgment. 

Entered for the Court 

Lewis T. Babcock 

District Judge 

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