Opinion ID: 522131
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Burden of Proving Public Availability

Text: 84 The SEC also argues that the district court erroneously placed upon it the burden of proving that the information contained in the contested documents was publicly available. Occidental in turn contends that it should not be required to prove a negative, viz., that the information has nowhere been published. 85 The SEC relies on our decision in CNA Financial Corp. v. Donovan, 830 F.2d 1132 (D.C.Cir.1987) for the proposition that the proponent of nondisclosure carrie[s] the burden to demonstrate that its documents [are] confidential. Brief of the Securities and Exchange Commission at 40. In fact, the court in CNA stated only that [t]o the extent that any data requested under FOIA are in the public domain, the submitter is unable to make any claim of confidentiality. Id. at 1154. Because public availability was not disputed in that case, however, the court expressly declined to address it, much less to determine who has the burden of proof on the issue. Id. 86 As we read the district court, it placed upon the SEC not the ultimate burden of persuasion--the statutory policy favoring disclosure requires that the opponent of disclosure indeed bear that burden, see Washington Post Co. v. United States Department of Justice, 863 F.2d 96, 101 (D.C.Cir.1988)--but only the burden of production, and we think that, at least in the posture of this dispute, the district court's allocation of that burden was eminently sensible. 87 First, as a general matter, it does seem that a reverse-FOIA claimant should not be called upon to prove non -public availability; presumably it would have to identify all of the public sources in which the information contained in its documents is not reproduced. To state that task is to see that it is bootless. It is far more efficient, and obviously fairer, to place the burden of production on the party who claims that the information is publicly available. 88 Second, the course of the administrative proceedings in this case makes it particularly difficult to accept the SEC's argument. The FOIA office gave no reasons for its initial denial of confidential treatment, and if the recommendation of the General Counsel's staff gave any such reasons, they were not communicated to Occidental. Thus, the question of public availability was apparently brought to Occidental's attention for the first time when the General Counsel issued his final decision. In effect, then, as the district court found, the General Counsel ruled on a ground of which Occidental had no prior notice and to which it had had no opportunity to respond. This finding, which is not disputed, makes even less convincing the SEC's argument that Occidental had the burden of proceeding before the General Counsel to show that the documents were not publicly available. 89