Title: Hill v. Fairfax County Sch. Bd.
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 111805
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: June 7, 2012

Present:  Kinser, C.J., Lemons, Millette, Mims, McClanahan, 
and Powell, JJ., and Koontz, S.J. 
 
JILL DEMELLO HILL 
 
 
 
OPINION BY 
v.  Record No. 111805 
SENIOR JUSTICE LAWRENCE L. KOONTZ, JR. 
 
 
 
June 7, 2012 
FAIRFAX COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF FAIRFAX COUNTY 
Leslie M. Alden, Judge 
 
 
In this appeal, we consider whether the circuit court 
correctly determined that certain exchanges of e-mails between 
members of a local school board did not constitute a "Meeting" 
within the meaning of Code § 2.2-3701 and, thus, did not 
violate the notice and open meeting requirements of the 
Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Code § 2.2-3700 et 
seq.  We further consider whether the court erred in 
concluding that because the citizen requesting information 
under the FOIA had not "substantially prevail[ed] on the 
merits of the case," Code § 2.2-3713(D), she was not entitled 
to an award of attorneys' fees and costs. 
BACKGROUND 
The material facts of this case are not in dispute and, 
despite a voluminous record, may be summarized briefly in 
order to address the dispositive issues in this appeal.  On 
February 17, 2011, Jill DeMello Hill filed in the Circuit 
Court of Fairfax County a petition for a writ of mandamus 
 
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against the Fairfax County School Board.  In her petition, 
Hill alleged that the Board had violated the FOIA since prior 
to a public meeting held on July 8, 2010 in which the Board 
voted to close Clifton Elementary School, various members of 
the Board conducted an unlawful closed meeting to discuss the 
closure of that local school principally through an exchange 
of e-mails.  Hill further alleged that the Board had violated 
the FOIA by denying her access to certain public records 
pertaining to the closure of Clifton Elementary by failing to 
provide those records in a timely and efficient manner, 
failing to provide full disclosure of those records, and/or 
without justification redacting parts of the records supplied 
to her. 
In her prayer for relief, Hill sought a mandate that the 
Board be required to provide all of the requested documents 
that it had not yet provided to her and to provide unredacted 
versions to the circuit court for an in camera review of those 
documents that the Board maintained were exempt from 
disclosure.  She further sought to require the Board to make 
all the requested documents available to the public for 
inspection and then for the Board to conduct a public meeting 
to revisit the issue of whether to close Clifton Elementary.  
Hill also sought an award of attorneys' fees and costs 
pursuant to Code § 2.2-3713(D). 
 
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On March 1, 2011, the Board filed an answer to Hill's 
mandamus action and expressly denied that "any meetings under 
[the FOIA] were conducted by e-mail."  The Board further 
denied that it had improperly withheld or redacted any 
documents that were subject to disclosure under the FOIA.  The 
Board asserted that Hill had failed to state adequate grounds 
for invalidating the July 8, 2010 public meeting and the vote 
to close Clifton Elementary, and that her claim for attorneys' 
fees and costs should be denied. 
Prior to the filing of the mandamus action, the Board had 
provided a significant number of documents, primarily in the 
form of e-mails exchanged by various members of the Board, in 
response to Hill's FOIA request.  By order of the circuit 
court, the Board further provided additional documents to Hill 
or to the court for in camera review in the course of the 
mandamus proceeding.  These documents served as the principal 
basis for Hill's assertion that the Board had conducted an 
improper closed meeting to discuss the closure of Clifton 
Elementary prior to the July 8, 2010 public meeting.  While 
several of the e-mails predated the public meeting by as much 
as three months, the majority were sent several days prior to 
or on July 8, 2010. 
The circuit court received these documents into evidence 
along with the testimony of numerous witnesses at an ore tenus 
 
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hearing held March 2 and 3, 2011.  The evidence showed that in 
addition to the e-mail exchanges, various Board members also 
communicated by telephone and in person in the days preceding 
the July 8, 2010 public meeting. 
On July 13, 2011, the circuit court issued a 
comprehensive opinion letter that was incorporated by 
reference in an order of final judgment denying mandamus 
relief to Hill.  As relevant to the issues raised in this 
appeal, the court expressly found that the exchange of e-mails 
by the members of the Board did not constitute a meeting of 
the Board for purposes of the FOIA because they did not 
involve sufficient simultaneity and did not result in any 
group consensus or discussion of business by any three members 
of the Board outside the context of a public meeting.  Thus, 
the court found that Hill had not established that she was 
entitled to the mandamus relief of requiring the Board to 
annul its prior decision to close Clifton Elementary and to 
revisit the matter. 
The circuit court further found that while the Board had 
violated the FOIA by its unreasonable delay in responding to 
Hill's initial request for electronic copies of certain 
documents, and by not releasing five documents that were not 
subject to an exemption until ordered to do so by the court, 
"the violations, although frustrating and vexing, ultimately 
 
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[were] de minimis" especially as Hill had received all the 
documents she had requested prior to the ore tenus hearing.  
Accordingly, the court concluded that Hill had not 
substantially prevailed on her FOIA challenge and, thus, was 
not entitled to attorneys' fees and costs. 
We awarded Hill an appeal to consider the following 
assignments of error: 
The trial court committed reversible error by 
holding that the [Fairfax County School Board] did 
not violate the FOIA's Open Meeting requirements 
when its members engaged in deliberations whether to 
close Clifton Elementary School via multiple 
conversations and dozens of e-mail communications in 
advance of the formal public meeting. 
 
The trial court committed reversible error by 
denying Petitioner's request for costs and 
attorneys' fees notwithstanding the court's holding 
that the [Fairfax County School Board] committed 
multiple violations of the FOIA. 
 
DISCUSSION 
Our resolution of Hill's first assignment of error is 
guided by our decision in Beck v. Shelton, 267 Va. 482, 593 
S.E.2d 195 (2004).  In Beck, we recognized that 
[i]ndisputably, the use of computers for textual 
communication has become commonplace around the 
world.  It can involve communication that is 
functionally similar to a letter sent by ordinary 
mail, courier, or facsimile transmission.  In this 
respect, there may be significant delay before the 
communication is received and additional delay in 
response.  However, computers can be utilized to 
exchange text in the nature of a discussion, 
potentially involving multiple participants, in what 
are euphemistically called "chat rooms" or by 
 
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"instant messaging."  In these forms, computer 
generated communication is virtually simultaneous. 
 
267 Va. at 489, 593 S.E.2d at 198. 
 
In the intervening eight years between Beck and the 
present case, information technology has advanced even 
further.  Real-time audio and visual communications over 
Internet-connected computers between two, three, or even more 
parties is now commonplace.  Moreover, the increased 
prevalence of "smartphones" and other mobile Internet-
connected devices has increased both the ability to access all 
forms of electronic communication and the rapidity with which 
a response can be sent.  Nonetheless, the inquiry to be made 
by the trier of fact remains the same as set forth in Beck, 
which is whether a series of electronic communications of 
whatever type constitutes a meeting of a public body for 
purposes of applying the FOIA. 
The FOIA, in relevant part, defines a "Meeting" as "an 
informal assemblage of (i) as many as three members or (ii) a 
quorum, if less than three, of the constituent membership 
. . . of any public body."  Code § 2.2-3701.  In Beck, we 
stated that 
"assemble" means "to bring together" and comes from 
the Latin simul, meaning "together, at the same 
time."  Webster's Third New International Dictionary 
131 (1993).  The term inherently entails the quality 
of simultaneity.  While such simultaneity may be 
present when e-mail technology is used in a "chat 
 
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room" or as "instant messaging," it is not present 
when e-mail is used as the functional equivalent of 
letter communication by ordinary mail, courier, or 
facsimile transmission. 
 
267 Va. at 490, 593 S.E.2d at 199 (footnote omitted).  We 
further noted that the legislature "anticipated that some 
electronic communication may constitute a 'meeting' and some 
may not."  Id. at 491, 593 S.E.2d at 199. (citing Code § 2.2-
3710(B)).  Thus, "the key difference between permitted use of 
electronic communication, such as e-mail, outside the notice 
and open meeting requirements of [the] FOIA, and those that 
constitute a 'meeting' under [the] FOIA, is the feature of 
simultaneity inherent in the term 'assemblage.' "  Id.  Thus, 
as we explained in Beck, the dispositive inquiry to be made by 
the trier of fact is "how the e-mail is used."  Id. at 489, 
593 S.E.2d at 199 (internal quotation marks omitted). 
Hill contends that unlike Beck, where we held that the 
exchanges of e-mails in question were " 'essentially a form of 
written communication,' " like letters or facsimile 
transmissions and, thus, lacked the necessary element of 
simultaneity, id. at 491, 593 S.E.2d at 200 (quoting 1999 Op. 
Atty. Gen. 12, 13), the e-mails between the Board members in 
this case were in the nature of an ongoing discussion 
involving multiple participants.  On brief, citing the "sheer 
volume of e-mails during a compressed time period," Hill 
 
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contends that the evidence demonstrated the Board's "reliance 
on[] using e-mail as a primary means to communicate."  Hill 
further contends that "[c]onsidering the time it takes to 
receive an e-mail, read it, draft a response and send it, it 
is difficult to fathom e-mail exchanges that would better meet 
the simultaneity requirement" than those at issue in this 
case.  Thus, she maintains that the circuit court was plainly 
wrong in finding that the e-mails did not constitute an 
assemblage of at least three members of the Board constituting 
an improper closed meeting in violation of Code § 2.2-3708.  
We disagree. 
Hill concedes that while the circuit court's 
interpretation of the FOIA is subject to de novo review, its 
findings of fact to which it applies that interpretation can 
be overturned only if plainly wrong or without support in the 
evidence.  See, e.g., RF&P Corp. v. Little, 247 Va. 309, 319, 
440 S.E.2d 908, 915 (1994).  The circuit court's 
interpretation of the FOIA in this case is entirely consistent 
with Beck.  Accordingly, we review the evidence as a whole to 
determine whether the court's factual finding that the 
communications among the Board members did not constitute an 
"assemblage" under the FOIA was plainly wrong. 
The circuit court's finding that no improper meeting of 
the Board had occurred was premised on multiple grounds 
 
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including express findings that "[a]lthough the e-mails in the 
present case were sent in much shorter intervals than the e-
mails sent in Beck, the e-mails sent by the Board members did 
not involve sufficient simultaneity to constitute a meeting," 
that "the Board [member]'s e-mails that involved some sort of 
back-and-forth exchange were between only two members at a 
time, rather than the three required," and that "e-mails sent 
to more than two Board members" whether directly, by carbon 
copy, or by forwarding, "conveyed information unilaterally, in 
the manner of an office memorandum."∗  Thus, the court 
concluded that "[t]hese messages did not generate group 
conversations or responses with multiple recipients." 
The circuit court's factual findings are a reasonable 
interpretation of the evidence regarding how the e-mails were 
used.  The circuit court's findings establish that the feature 
of simultaneity inherent in the term assemblage is not 
established in this case.  Accordingly, we cannot say that the 
                     
∗ The record contains only one e-mail sent from one board 
member directly to two others.  This e-mail was the last reply 
in an exchange of several e-mails in which the sender merely 
suggested in jest that they all "need[ed] to go on a long 
vacation."  More typical of e-mails that involved multiple 
school board members directly were those sent to the entire 
board and staff members discussing changes to the agenda of 
the public meeting.  Many of the e-mails sent during this time 
were not related to the closure of Clifton Elementary at all, 
but instead dealt with other issues or were purely personal in 
nature. 
 
 
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court's judgment that there had been no violation of Code 
§ 2.2-3708 was plainly wrong or without support in the 
evidence.  We therefore hold that the court did not err in 
determining that the Board had not conducted an improper 
closed meeting in violation of the notice and open meeting 
requirements of the FOIA. 
We now turn to Hill's second assignment of error 
asserting that the circuit court erred in failing to award her 
attorneys' fees and costs notwithstanding its finding that the 
Board committed "multiple" violations of the FOIA in response 
to her original request for documents related to the closure 
of Clifton Elementary.  Code § 2.2-3713(D) provides for an 
award of "reasonable costs . . . and attorneys' fees" when a 
party "substantially prevails on the merits of the case, 
unless special circumstances would make an award unjust."  The 
issue before us then is whether Hill substantially prevailed 
on the merits of her case. 
The circuit court expressly found that "Hill did not 
substantially prevail on the merits of her case."  This was 
so, the court reasoned, because "[t]he gravamen of [Hill's] 
claim, that the Board met secretly by e-mail and that the 
decision to close [Clifton Elementary] should be set aside, 
was rejected by the Court." 
 
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As used in Code § 2.2-3713(D), "the merits of the case" 
plainly refers to the object of the action in which a claim 
that the FOIA has been violated is made, and that the party 
has prevailed in proving that there was some violation of the 
FOIA by the public body.  See, e.g., Fenter v. Norfolk Airport 
Auth., 274 Va. 524, 532, 649 S.E.2d 704, 709 (2007); White Dog 
Publ'g, Inc. v. Culpeper Bd. of Sup., 272 Va. 377, 387-88, 634 
S.E.2d 334, 340 (2006).  If the purpose of the action is 
merely to force compliance with the FOIA by requiring the 
public body to produce the requested documents, then a finding 
by the trial court that some documents were wrongfully 
withheld may satisfy the statute's requirement that the party 
"substantially prevails on the merits."  See RF&P Corp., 247 
Va. at 323 n.5, 440 S.E.2d at 917 n.5 (holding that a party 
"was required to show that he substantially prevailed on the 
merits of the case, not that he prevailed on every issue he 
raised").  In this case, however, the circuit court correctly 
noted that the object of Hill's mandamus petition was not to 
obtain the small number of documents that the court found 
should have been disclosed.  Nor was it to establish that the 
Board had failed to supply these documents in a timely and 
efficient manner.  Rather, the principal purpose of Hill's 
petition was to overturn the result of the Board's July 8, 
2010 decision to close Clifton Elementary.  As she did not 
 
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prevail on that issue, we hold that the court did not err in 
denying her request for attorneys' fees and costs. 
CONCLUSION 
For these reasons, we will affirm the judgment of the 
circuit court denying mandamus relief to Hill and further 
finding that she was not entitled to an award of attorneys' 
fees and costs under the FOIA. 
Affirmed.