Opinion ID: 515713
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Exception (7)(B)

Text: 13 Exemption (7)(B) exempts records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes to the extent that production would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(b)(7)(B). It is settled that the report satisfies the first part of this definition. The legitimacy of the Department's invoking (7)(B) turns on the meaning and applicability of the second portion of the exemption. 14 What is required to establish that production of a document being sought under FOIA would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial is a question of first impression for this court. In framing a test, we write on a virtually clean slate. Few courts have decided (7)(B) questions and the legislative history on this provision is scant. The wording of the statute is all Congress has given us to work with. See United States Department of Justice, Attorney General's Memorandum on the 1974 Amendments to the Freedom of Information Act 8 (1975) [hereinafter A.G. Mem.], reprinted in House Comm. on Gov. Operations and Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., Freedom of Information Act and Amendments of 1974 Source Book, at 518 (1975) [hereinafter Sourcebook]. The exemption was enacted as part of the FOIA amendments of 1974. Congress replaced the old section (7), which protected any investigatory record not otherwise available, with the six tightly drawn categories of protection listed in Sec. 552(b)(7). The wording of the second of those categories, now (7)(B), survived intact and without debate from the floor amendment by Senator Philip Hart. 15 We begin this analysis, as we must, within the framework that precedent does provide. FOIA is to be interpreted with a presumption favoring disclosure and exemptions are to be construed narrowly. See Department of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 361, 96 S.Ct. 1592, 1599, 48 L.Ed.2d 11 (1976). The burden of proof rests on the party who seeks to prevent disclosure. See EPA v. Mink, 410 U.S. 73, 79, 93 S.Ct. 827, 832, 35 L.Ed.2d 119 (1973). That burden cannot be met by mere conclusory statements; the agency must show how release of the particular material would have the adverse consequence that the Act seeks to guard against. See Campbell v. HHS, 682 F.2d 256, 259 (D.C.Cir.1982). 16 The Attorney General's Memorandum on the 1974 Amendments, of interest whether or not due deference, interpreted the exemption as protecting the rights of private persons, including corporations, and applying to both civil and criminal proceedings as well as agency adjudications. The exemption, according to the Attorney General, was meant to prevent disclosures from conferring an unfair advantage upon one party to an adversary proceeding or leading to prejudicial publicity in pending cases that might inflame jurors or distort administrative judgment. See A.G. Mem. at 9, Sourcebook at 519. 17 The few cases that have addressed (7)(B) as a ground for withholding documents have rejected it as inapplicable because one or another threshold element was not established. In Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Department of Justice, 516 F.Supp. 233, 246 (D.D.C.1981), aff'd in pertinent part, 677 F.2d 931 (D.C.Cir.1982), the district court rejected the ground because no proceedings were pending. Two district courts have found (7)(B) grounds inapplicable because the government failed to show that publicity would be so prejudicial as to deprive someone of a fair trial or impartial adjudication. See Associated General Contractors of America v. Small Business Administration, 1 Gov't Disclosure Cas. (P-H) p 79,119, at 79,158 (D.D.C. Oct. 1, 1979) (finding proffer inadequate to show extent of publicity and prejudice that would result); Education/Instruccion, Inc. v. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 471 F.Supp. 1074, 1078 (D.Mass.1979) (holding that administrative adjudicator's seeing investigative report could not vitiate impartiality as law permits investigator to sit as adjudicator on same matter). 18 Perhaps the major value of the Attorney General's Memorandum, in conjunction with this sparse case law, is to emphasize the wide variety of persons and proceedings but narrow range of situations to which (7)(B) applies. As with all FOIA exemptions, (7)(B) is limited to protecting material only where release would bring about the adverse consequence that Congress sought to prevent. 19 Today, we hold that to withstand a challenge to the applicability of (7)(B) the government bears the burden of showing: (1) that a trial or adjudication is pending or truly imminent; and (2) that it is more probable than not that disclosure of the material sought would seriously interfere with the fairness of those proceedings. Where the government is denying access to material generated by someone else, as here, the government must be able to confirm, to its own satisfaction, whether by affidavit or otherwise, that (1) and (2) above are satisfied. 20 Whether the first and second prong of this test are satisfied is, in the first instance, for the district court to ascertain. The record before us in this case does not contain the factual findings necessary to resolve the question, and we therefore remand the record for a determination of this point. The court below did find that there were no longer any criminal proceedings pending or imminent, as the Department of Justice had accepted a guilty plea from Lilly and a nolo contendere plea from the Chief Medical Officer of Lilly Research Laboratories and planned no further indictments. The court also found that the parties asserted that four civil product liability cases were pending. But the status of those or other civil cases at this point is not clear. The Department's brief deferred entirely to Lilly on this question. Lilly merely asserted, in a footnote, that there was litigation pending, without specification. Such an unsupported assertion, from a non-government party, does not rise to the level of proof necessary to satisfy the first prong of a (7)(B) exemption. 21 Even if Lilly were faced with current litigation arising from its marketing of Oraflex, it would not automatically follow that disclosure of the report would deprive Lilly of a fair trial. The second prong is not a redundancy but requires separate findings. Congress made the threshold of (7)(B) higher than for most of the other exemptions for law enforcement material. Whereas (7)(A), (C), (D) and (F) permit records to be withheld if release could reasonably be expected to cause a particular evil, (7)(B) requires that release would deprive a person of fair adjudication. Sec. 552(b)(7)(A)-(F). It may be that release of the document to the Post could be expected to lead to publicity which was not just disadvantageous to Lilly but of a nature and degree that judicial fairness would be compromised. It may be that disclosure through FOIA would furnish access to a document not available under the discovery rules and thus would confer an unfair advantage on one of the parties. The trial court, on remand, is best situated to consider whether the facts here are sufficient to meet (7)(B)'s second prong.III. CONCLUSION 22 Accordingly, we remand the record to the district court for a determination of whether the Department of Justice is entitled, under 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(b)(7)(B), to withhold the Report and Recommendations of the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of Eli Lilly and Company Concerning The Development and Marketing of Oraflex which was requested by The Washington Post. In addition, we reverse the district court's findings that exemptions (3) and (7)(C) permit the Department of Justice to resist The Washington Post's FOIA request. 23 The record is forthwith remanded to the district court for further proceedings, consistent with this opinion. 24 It is so ordered.