Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-96-05068/USCOURTS-caDC-96-05068-0/pdf.json

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

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 12, 1998 Decided February 24, 1998 

No. 96-5068

ROLANDO PERALTA,

APPELLANT

v.

U.S. ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 94cv00760)

Maja D. Hazell, student counsel, argued the cause as 

amicus curiae, with whom Steven H. Goldblatt, appointed by 

the court, Catherine E. Lhamon, and Laura E. Mascheroni, 

student counsel, were on the briefs.

Rolando Peralta, appearing pro se, was on the brief for 

appellant.

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Cynthia A. Schnedar, Assistant United States Attorney, 

argued the cause for appellee, with whom Mary Lou Leary,

United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and R. 

Craig Lawrence, Assistant United States Attorney, were on 

the brief. Darya Geetter, Assistant United States Attorney, 

entered an appearance.

Before: SILBERMAN, WILLIAMS and SENTELLE, Circuit 

Judges.

Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge SENTELLE.

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge: Seeking records relating to his 

criminal conviction, Rolando Peralta filed a pro se complaint 

under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552 

("FOIA"), and named a local United States Attorney's Office 

as the sole defendant. The Executive Office for United 

States Attorneys ("Executive Office"), the entity responsible 

for responding to FOIA requests directed to local United 

States Attorneys' Offices, participated in the case on behalf of 

the named defendant, releasing some documents to Peralta 

and referring the processing of others to the Federal Bureau 

of Investigation. The district court ordered the Executive 

Office dismissed from the case, concluding that it had complied with its obligations under the FOIA. The district court 

also granted a motion for a stay that the defendant had filed 

on behalf of the FBI, granting the FBI additional time to 

process the documents the Executive Office had referred to 

it. The district court took these actions even though the 

Executive Office and the FBI were not named in the complaint as parties and had not been joined as parties to the 

case.

Peralta appealed from the district court's dismissal of the 

Executive Office. Peralta asserts that we have jurisdiction 

over the district court's order because it is "final" and appealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. The government, on the other 

hand, challenges our jurisdiction to hear this appeal. It 

urges us to treat the Department of Justicenot the local 

United States Attorney's Office sued by Peralta, the Executive Office or the FBIas the sole defendant before the 

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district court. Under this approach, the district court's order 

left loose ends relating to (would-be) sole defendant Department of Justice, which would mean that the order could not 

be "final" under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. This argument would 

have considerably greater force if the government had successfully moved below to substitute the Department of Justice 

as defendant. But it did not. Rejecting the government's 

attempt to rewrite the history of this case, we conclude that 

the district court's order was final because it dismissed the 

Executive Officean entity all parties treated as if it stood in 

the shoes of the sole named defendantfrom the case. Accordingly, we assert jurisdiction over the district court's 

order, vacate that order, and remand the case to the district 

court.

I. Background

In order to make sense of this case, we note preliminarily 

that the parties and the district court lost track of the 

identity of the "defendant" in this litigation. Rolando Peralta 

named one defendant in his FOIA complaint: the United 

States Attorney's Office for the Central District of California 

("the Central District"). Before the district court, the government's filings occasionally referred to the Central District 

as the defendant, but they also referred to the Executive 

Office and the FBI as defendants, even though those entities 

were never formally added as parties to the case. In response to the government's motions, the district court dismissed the Executive Office from the case and stayed the 

case on behalf of the FBI. The district court took no formal 

action with respect to the Central District. To further complicate matters, the government argues on appeal that still 

another entity, the United States Department of Justice, was 

the sole defendant before the district court. We provide this 

abbreviated overview as a prelude to the following confusing 

tale.

Rolando Peralta, an inmate at the Federal Correctional 

Institution in Terminal Island, California, sought records 

relating to his criminal conviction pursuant to the Freedom of 

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Information Act. Peralta initially requested the documents 

by writing to Assistant United States Attorney Carol Gilliam 1

of the Central District of California. When he received no 

response to his request within the statutory ten-day period, 

Peralta filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Central District, 

asserting that the Central District possessed the documents 

he wanted. See Complaint at ¶ 4. Peralta's complaint further alleged that "Defendant, U.S. Attorney's Office for the 

Central District of California, is an agency in the U.S. Department of Justice, a department within the Executive 

Branch of the United Stated [sic] Government." Id.

The "defendant" moved the district court to dismiss Peralta's case, claiming it had never received Peralta's FOIA 

request. Litigating that motion, the movant referred to itself 

as "Defendant" or "Defendant in the above-captioned case." 

The case caption in some of its filings identified the "defendant" as "U.S. Attorney's Office"; in other filings, the caption 

identified the "defendant" as "United States Attorney's Office, Central District of California." After that motion was 

briefed, the "defendant" discovered that AUSA Gilliam had

received Peralta's request, but apparently did not understand 

its significance, and had subsequently lost it. In light of this 

development, the district court denied the motion to dismiss 

and granted the "defendant's" motion for a ninety-day stay to 

"permit the defendant to submit the relevant documents to 

the Executive Office of United States Attorneys for processing." The Executive Office is the entity responsible for 

fielding FOIA requests sent to individual U.S. Attorney's 

Offices throughout the country. See U.S. Attys. Man. 

1-9.130.

After the ninety-day stay had expired, the "defendant"

still calling itself simply the "[d]efendant in the abovecaptioned case"informed the district court that it had fur-

__________

1 The defendant filed one declaration with the district court 

identifying this person as "Carol Gilliam," see Supplemental Declaration of John F. Boseker ¶ 1, and another identifying her as "Carol 

Gillam." See Declaration of Claire De Longe ¶ 1. Not knowing 

which name is correct, we shall refer to her as Carol Gilliam here.

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nished Peralta with 414 pages of responsive documents in 

their entirety and 28 pages in part, and that it had withheld 

396 pages in their entirety pursuant to FOIA exemptions. It 

also noted that some 290 pages "were referred to the Federal 

Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for review and direct response 

to plaintiff." Id. We shall refer to these documents as the 

"FBI Documents."

The "defendant" subsequently filed a motion captioned 

"The Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys' Motion to Dismiss 

or, in the Alternative, For Summary Judgment." The motion 

asked the district court to dismiss the Executive Office from 

the case on the ground that it had fully complied with its 

FOIA obligations. On the same date, the "defendant" filed 

another motion captioned "Defendant's Motion for a Stay on 

Behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." That motion 

said that due to a backlog in processing FOIA requests, 

"plaintiff's request [for the FBI Documents] will not reach its 

turn in the queue until March, 2002." Accordingly, the 

movant requested the district court to enter a stay on behalf 

of the FBI to give the FBI time to process Peralta's request 

for the FBI Documents.

The district court granted both motions. Agreeing that the 

Executive Office had lived up to its FOIA obligations, the 

district court granted "defendant's motion for summary judgment" and dismissed the case "as to Defendant Executive 

Office of the U.S. Attorneys." In its Memorandum Order, 

the district court assumed that the Executive Office need not 

respond to Peralta's request for the FBI Documents, stating 

that "approximately 200 [sic] pages of documents ... [were] 

referred ... to the FBI for processing and direct response to 

plaintiff."

On the same day, and in a separate order, the district court 

granted the "defendant's" motion for a stay. In its order, the 

court said it was ruling on "the motion of defendant Federal 

Bureau of Investigation for a stay in this case until March 

2002," and ordered the case to be stayed until February 1, 

1998 (emphasis added). By doing so, the district court purported to elevate the FBI to the status of a party to the case, 

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even though (1) the FBI was not named in the original case 

caption; (2) the FBI had never been served with a summons, 

complaint, or any other pleading; (3) Peralta never amended 

his complaint to add the FBI as a party; (4) the FBI had not 

been added as a party through joinder or intervention; (5) 

the FBI had never filed a pleading on its own behalf; (6) the 

district court docket did not show the FBI as a party to the 

case; and (7) Peralta, opposing the motion for a stay, had 

correctly reminded the district court that "there are no 

proceedings before the courts [sic] against the F.B.I."

Peralta filed a timely notice of appeal from the district 

court's order dismissing the Executive Office from the case.2

II. Discussion

Our jurisdiction to review judgments of the district court is 

confined to "appeals from all final decisions," 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1291, and to interlocutory appeals meeting the criteria 

stated in 28 U.S.C. § 1292. Put another way, we have no 

power to hear an appeal from the district court unless the 

district court's decision is "final" or one of the section 1292 

exceptions applies. See Everett v. US Airways Group, Inc.,

No. 96-7158, 1998 WL 1799, at *1 (D.C. Cir. Jan. 6, 1998). A 

district court's decision is "final" if it "ends the litigation on 

the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute 

the judgment." Catlin v. United States, 324 U.S. 229, 233 

(1945); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(b).

Urging us to dismiss this case for want of appellate jurisdiction, the government argues that we should treat the 

Department of Justice as having been the sole defendant 

before the trial court. If we accept this point, we could not 

appropriately treat the appealed-from order as a "final decision" pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 because that order, which 

__________

2 A review of the file located in the district court clerk's office 

reveals that after the district court dismissed the Executive Office 

from the case, both the district court and the "defendant" have 

proceeded as if the FBI is the sole defendant in the case, captioning 

their recent orders and filings: Rolando Peralta v. Federal Bureau 

of Investigation.

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did not resolve the fate of the FBI Documents, did not end 

the litigation on the merits.

First, the government argues that the DOJ must have been 

the sole defendant below because the FOIA only applies to 

the DOJ, not to DOJ components FBI and Executive Office. 

Under the FOIA,

the term "agency" as defined in section 551(1) of this title 

includes any executive department, military department, 

Government corporation, Government controlled corporation, or other establishment in the executive branch of 

the Government (including the Executive Office of the 

President), or any independent regulatory agency.

5 U.S.C. § 552(f). The reference to "section 551(1) of this 

title" is to the definitional section of the Administrative 

Procedure Act, which states that " 'agency' means each authority of the Government of the United States, whether or 

not it is within or subject to review by another agency...." 

In any event, because the government raised this argument 

for the first time on appeal, we shall not consider it. See 

District of Columbia v. Air Florida, Inc., 750 F.2d 1077, 

1084-85 (D.C. Cir. 1984).

The government is free to reassert this argument on 

remand if it desires. However, we suspect that the FBI is 

subject to the FOIA in its own name. We have observed 

previously that the FBI is "clearly ... covered" by the FOIA, 

McGehee v. CIA, 697 F.2d 1095, 1108 (D.C. Cir. 1983). The 

FOIA itself appears to contemplate that the FBI is subject to 

its provisions. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(c)(3) (providing that the 

FBI may treat certain classified information as not subject to 

FOIA disclosure). And, the FBI has litigated numerous 

FOIA cases in its own name before the Supreme Court, this 

court, and other circuit courts, with the DOJ or one of its 

components appearing as counsel. See, e.g., FBI v. Abramson, 456 U.S. 615 (1982) (Solicitor General's Office representing FBI); Williams v. FBI, 69 F.3d 1155 (D.C. Cir. 1995) 

(U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia representing FBI and DOJ); Quinon v. FBI, 86 F.3d 1222 (D.C. Cir. 

1996) (U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia 

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representing FBI); Ferguson v. FBI, 83 F.3d 41 (2nd Cir. 

1996) (U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New 

York representing FBI); Jones v. FBI, 41 F.3d 238 (6th Cir. 

1994) (DOJ representing FBI); Schiffer v. FBI, 78 F.3d 1405 

(9th Cir. 1996) (DOJ representing FBI and DOJ). Indeed, we 

note that, despite the government's position that district 

courts lack jurisdiction over the FBI as a named agencyparty in FOIA cases, the FBI is currently participating as a 

litigant before the district court in this very case. See

footnote 2, above.

In addition to arguing that the district court had jurisdiction over the DOJ alone, the government also asserts that the 

DOJ was the de facto defendant before the district court. 

Apparently a "de facto defendant" is a non-party which an 

appellate court decides to treat as if it had been a party. The 

government says that we recognized de facto party status in 

Monarch Life Ins. Co. v. Elam, 918 F.2d 201, 203 (D.C. Cir. 

1990). In that case, a named party, Elam, agreed to settle 

her personal injury case in exchange for a $19,000 payment 

from the defendant's insurance company. Citing an earlier 

judgment against Elam, a different insurance company filed a 

lawsuit against her, asserting its own interest in the settlement fund. Elam's lawyer believed he was entitled to a cut of 

that payment as a result of a contingent fee agreement with 

Elam. The lawyer never filed a motion in his own name; 

instead, he piggybacked his personal claim onto pleadings 

filed on Elam's behalf. We observed in dicta that the lawyer 

"might well be regarded as a de facto intervenor" before the 

district court because he "was present in fact throughout 

every stage of the proceedings below (though not as a named 

party)" and because Elam herself lacked any "real substantive interest" in the settlement fund. Id. at 203. However, 

we found the question of the lawyer's "de facto intervenor" 

status to be academic, because it had not been raised on 

appeal. Id. In other words, we simply mentioned the concept of de facto party status, without passing on its validity. 

Accordingly, we reject the government's attempt to treat this 

dicta as precedent for this circuit's recognition of that amorphous concept.

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Although we do not recognize de facto party status today, it 

is apparent that the DOJ has not established that it would 

qualify as a de facto defendant in this case even if we thought 

such a thing existed.3 The record does not demonstrate that 

the DOJ behaved as a party in the district court. On July 19, 

1995, the "defendant" filed with the district court:

! A motion entitled "The Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys' Motion to Dismiss or, in the alternative, for Summary Judgment." The case caption identifies the defendant as "U.S. Attorney's Office."

! A "Memorandum in Support of Defendants' Motion for 

Summary Judgment." The case caption identifies the 

defendant as "U.S. Attorney's Office."

! Fourth Declaration of John Boseker. The case caption 

identifies the defendant as "United States Attorney's 

Office, Central District of California."

! "Defendant's Motion for a Stay on Behalf of the Federal 

Bureau of Investigation." In this motion, "defendants 

request that this case be stayed on behalf of the FBI 

until March, 2002, ... [at which time] the defendant 

should be in a position to provide the Court with additional information on the time required for processing."

Looking at this single day's filings, one wonders which 

governmental entity or entities were participating in the 

litigation. The Central District? The Executive Office? The 

FBI? Some combination of the above? The government 

asks us to extract from this morass the principle that the 

DOJ "actually participated in the proceedings below" as the 

sole defendant. We see no basis in the record for doing so. 

Although the record reveals that this somewhat schizophrenic 

"defendant" may have believed that it was one or more of the 

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3 The government argues in the alternative that we should treat 

the FBI as a de facto defendant, but never explains why we should 

do so. We reject this argument because it is insufficiently developed. See Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(6); United States v. Marshall, No. 

96-3053, 1998 WL 1798, at *8 (D.C. Cir. Jan. 6, 1998).

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above entities, the "defendant" never identified itself as the 

DOJ. Even more importantly, unlike the non-party lawyer in 

Elam, the DOJ did nothing in its own name before the 

district court, whether as a party or not. In light of these 

key facts, the government's argument that we should treat 

the DOJ as the sole "de facto" defendant amounts to nothing 

more than wishful thinking.

When the district court dismissed the Executive Office 

from the case, all of the parties (as well as the district court) 

assumed that the Executive Office was the alter ego of the 

named defendant, Central Division, and had litigated the case 

on its behalf. We make the same assumption here. Because 

the district court's order effected the dismissal of the only 

defendant from the case, that order was a final decision 

pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we may assert jurisdiction 

over it. The fact that the district court concurrently entered 

a stay on behalf of a non-party does not render that order any 

less final.

Having concluded that we have jurisdiction over the district 

court's judgment, we reverse it. Although the district court 

order dismissed the only defendant party in this case, it did 

not resolve all of the issues. The district court made no 

finding that the requested FBI Documents were either subject to disclosure or exempt from disclosure under the FOIA; 

rather, it apparently approved of the Executive Office's referral of these documents to non-party FBI for processing. We 

find this to be reversible error and remand to the district 

court.

On remand, the district court's first task is to impose order 

on this chaotic record, and resolve who the defendant or 

defendants are in this case. The district court must confront 

another question on remand: was the Executive Office justified in referring the FBI Documents to the FBI for processing? In other words, did this referral procedure result in the 

improper "withholding" of the FBI Documents? See 5 U.S.C. 

§ 552(a)(4)(B). To determine if it did, a reviewing court must 

ask if the "net effect [of the referral procedure] is significantly to impair the requester's ability to obtain the records or 

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significantly to increase the amount of time he must wait to 

obtain them." McGehee, 697 F.2d at 1110. Such a "withholding" will be considered "improper" unless the agency can 

offer a reasonable explanation for its procedure. Id. In 

McGehee, we emphasized that there is no "bright line" test 

for evaluating a given referral procedure, but we outlined a 

model procedure to assist courts in doing so. Id. at 1111. 

Under that framework, a court considers whether the originating agency has the "intent to control" the contested records, and whether the referral is "prompt and public." Id. at 

1111-12; see also Paisley v. CIA, 712 F.2d 686, 691-92 (D.C. 

Cir. 1983).

Neither party cited Paisley or McGehee to the district 

court, and the district court mentioned neither case in its 

order approving of the referral of the FBI Documents to the 

FBI for processing. Nor did the district court make any 

findings as to whether the referral procedure used in this 

case was appropriate. On remand, the district court must 

evaluate the referral procedure in light of these cases,4its 

own resolution of which entity or entities are proper agency 

defendants in this case, and a DOJ regulation (promulgated 

after we decided Paisley and McGehee) providing for the 

referral of records to originating components or agencies 

under certain circumstances.5See 28 C.F.R. § 16.4(d).

III. Conclusion

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 10(a) provides that "the 

names of all the parties" must appear in complaints filed in 

federal court. The Federal Rules also provide formal means 

of adding parties to a federal lawsuit that were not named in 

the complaint. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 19(a); 20(a); 25(c). At 

__________

4 The district court may consider Peralta's argument, raised for 

the first time before us in his reply brief, that our model procedure 

has been undercut by United States Dep't of Justice v. Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. 136, 145 (1989).

5 The district court may consider Peralta's argument, raised for 

the first time on appeal, that this regulation is invalid because it 

conflicts with Paisley and McGehee.

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the government's request, the district court dismissed the 

case against an entity that all parties treated as the alter ego 

of the original sole defendant. Also at the government's 

request, the district court stayed the case on behalf of 

another entity that was not named in Peralta's complaint and 

was not added to the case through formal means. These 

actions led to the tangled record we have before us, to our 

appointment of Georgetown's able Appellate Litigation Program as amicus to help sort out the confusion, and to our own 

efforts to make sense of the jurisdictional issues raised by 

this case. With some regret, we note that all of these things 

could have been avoided if the government and the district 

court had paid attention to the elemental issue of who the 

parties were in this litigation.

We vacate the judgment of the district court and remand 

for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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