Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05379/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05379-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Bureau of Land Management
Appellant
Judicial Watch, Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 19, 2010 Decided July 6, 2010 

No. 08-5379 

JUDICIAL WATCH, INC., 

APPELLEE

v. 

BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, 

APPELLANT

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:07-cv-01570-RCL) 

Michael E. Robinson, Attorney, U.S. Department of 

Justice, argued the cause for appellant. With him on the briefs 

was Leonard Schaitman, Attorney. R. Craig Lawrence, 

Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered an appearance. 

Michael Bekesha argued the cause for appellee. With 

him on the brief were Paul J. Orfanedes and James F. 

Peterson. 

Before: HENDERSON, TATEL and GRIFFITH, Circuit 

Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH. 

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GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: The Bureau of Land 

Management appeals an award of attorneys’ fees to Judicial 

Watch, Inc. in an action brought under the Freedom of 

Information Act. For the reasons set forth below, we reverse 

the decision of the district court and vacate the fee award. 

I.

In March 2007, Judicial Watch requested records of 

communications between the Bureau and the Nevada 

congressional delegation about a transaction involving federal 

lands. When the Bureau failed to produce the documents, 

Judicial Watch sought to compel their disclosure in a FOIA 

suit filed in the district court in September 2007. The Bureau 

voluntarily turned over thirty-five pages of responsive 

documents later that month. At Judicial Watch’s request, the 

Bureau also conducted a supplemental search for additional 

relevant documents. When that search proved fruitless, 

Judicial Watch elected not to proceed with its lawsuit. In 

January 2008, the parties filed a joint stipulation asking the 

district court to enter a judgment in favor of the agency. In the 

stipulation, Judicial Watch reserved the right to request 

attorneys’ fees. 

On December 31, 2007, after the Bureau’s disclosure of 

the requested records but before the filing of the stipulation, 

the President signed into law the OPEN Government Act of 

2007. See Pub. L. No. 110-175, 121 Stat. 2524 (codified at 5 

U.S.C. § 552 (Supp. III 2009)) [hereinafter 2007 Act]. Before 

the 2007 Act took effect, only FOIA plaintiffs who had 

“‘been awarded some relief by [a] court,’ either in a judgment 

on the merits or in a court-ordered consent decree,” could 

recover attorneys’ fees. Oil, Chem. & Atomic Workers Int’l 

Union v. Dep’t of Energy, 288 F.3d 452, 457 (D.C. Cir. 

2002); see Davis v. DOJ, No. 09-5189 (D.C. Cir. July 6, 

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2010). The 2007 Act made fee awards permissible not only 

when the litigation results in “a judicial order, or an 

enforceable written agreement or consent decree,” 5 U.S.C. 

§ 552(a)(4)(E)(ii)(I) (Supp. III 2009), but also when the 

lawsuit brings about “a voluntary or unilateral change in 

position by the agency,” so long as the FOIA claim is “not 

insubstantial,” id. § 552(a)(4)(E)(ii)(II). 

After the district court entered judgment for the Bureau, 

Judicial Watch moved for attorneys’ fees. Because Judicial 

Watch was not eligible for a fee award under the old standard, 

its motion for attorneys’ fees was based on the 2007 Act. The 

Bureau opposed the motion, arguing that the Act could not be 

applied retroactively to increase the government’s liability for 

conduct that took place before it became law. The district 

court disagreed and awarded Judicial Watch $3,605.57.

Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Bureau of Land Mgmt., 562 F. Supp. 

2d 159, 166–72, 176 (D.D.C. 2008).

While the Bureau’s appeal was pending, we held in 

Summers v. Department of Justice that the 2007 Act cannot be 

applied retroactively. 569 F.3d 500, 503 (D.C. Cir. 2009). The 

Bureau moved for summary reversal of the district court’s 

decision in light of Summers. We denied the motion in order 

to consider more fully Judicial Watch’s argument that 

applying the new statute to its fee request raised no 

retroactivity concerns because the parties settled their dispute 

after the new law took effect. We have jurisdiction to review 

the award under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. See Cotton v. Heyman, 63 

F.3d 1115, 1117–19 (D.C. Cir. 1995). Because the temporal 

scope of a statute is a question of law, our review is de novo. 

Trout v. Sec’y of Navy, 317 F.3d 286, 289 (D.C. Cir. 2003). 

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II. 

At least four events must occur before the government is 

liable for attorneys’ fees under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(E)(ii)(II): 

(1) the plaintiff files a FOIA request with the agency; (2) the 

agency fails to disclose requested records; (3) the plaintiff 

sues; and (4) the agency voluntarily or unilaterally changes its 

position. In this case, as in Summers, all four events took 

place before the 2007 Act became law. But unlike in 

Summers, where the parties settled in 2005, the parties here 

did not settle their litigation until after the change in the law. 

Judicial Watch argues that the Summers court, by expressly 

holding that the 2007 Act cannot be applied to cases settled 

before its effective date, 569 F.3d at 503–04, implicitly held 

that it can be applied to any case settled after that date. 

The matter is not so simple. Summers held that the 2007 

Act may not be given retroactive effect, but it did not address 

the question presented here: whether the Act applies when the 

agency unilaterally disclosed the requested records before the 

statute’s enactment but the parties’ formal settlement came 

afterwards. We conclude that application of the 2007 Act to 

these facts would have impermissible retroactive effects. 

A statute has retroactive effects if it “attaches new legal 

consequences to events completed before its enactment.” 

Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244, 270 (1994). 

Applying the 2007 Act to this case would attach a new legal 

consequence (liability for attorneys’ fees) to an event 

completed before its enactment (the Bureau’s disclosure in 

September 2007). Judicial Watch implicitly concedes as much 

when it argues that it became eligible for an award of 

attorneys’ fees under the new law when the Bureau disclosed 

the requested records. See Appellee’s Br. at 18 (“It was only 

after Judicial Watch filed the Complaint that BLM released 

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the responsive documents. . . . [T]his constitutes a voluntary 

change in position by BLM. . . . Judicial Watch . . . is, 

therefore, eligible for an award of attorneys’ fees.”). That 

assertion undermines Judicial Watch’s argument that 

application of the 2007 Act would not be retroactive because

the litigation continued until after the Act became law. The 

disclosure was last in the chain of events relevant to Judicial 

Watch’s eligibility for attorneys’ fees under the new law, and 

it took place months before the law’s enactment. That the 

parties subsequently settled is without relevance to the 

Bureau’s possible liability for attorneys’ fees. And because 

the fact of the settlement is irrelevant, the timing of the 

settlement has no bearing upon the question of retroactivity. If 

the 2007 Act were applied to these facts, it would attach new 

legal consequences to the Bureau’s disclosure of the records. 

Because the disclosure came before the 2007 Act took effect, 

application of the new law here would be retroactive. 

Application of the new statute to this case raises the same 

retroactivity concerns identified in Summers. Because 

Congress did not make the statute retroactive, see Summers, 

569 F.3d at 504, it is of no help to Judicial Watch. 

III. 

The decision of the district court is reversed and the 

award of attorneys’ fees vacated. 

So ordered. 

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