Opinion ID: 77938
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sufficiency of the Evidence Before the Trial Court

Text: The Tribe first argues that the evidence presented by the EPA was simply not sufficient for the district court to determine on the merits whether the search was adequate and reasonable. This is a threshold issue. Setting aside the question of whether the search was reasonable based upon the Rule 56 record, the court must determine whether the Rule 56 record before the trial court was adequate for it to make a summary judgment determination. The Tribe's argument is two-fold: (1) the Dominy Affidavit alone is not sufficient evidence of the reasonableness of the search because he did not participate in it; and (2) the testimony before the trial court did not contain the requisite level of detail regarding the specifics of the search to allow the court to ascertain its reasonableness.
Before the court can address the Tribe's arguments, however, it is important to review the principal Rule 56 evidence presented by the EPA regarding its searches.
The EPA's primary testimony regarding the searches incident to the Tribe's February and June FOIA requests arose from two sources. First, the EPA relied on the affidavit of Randy Dominy, the current Region 4 Chief of the EPA FOIA and Records Services Division. Dominy, who was the representative designated by the EPA to demonstrate that the search was adequate in response to the magistrate judge's July 15, 2005 discovery order, testified concerning the scope and process of EPA FOIA searches in general and the February and June FOIA searches in particular. Second, the EPA proffered the deposition testimony of Region 4 Records Section FOIA specialist Jennifer Pearce, to whom the Tribe's requests were routed when they came through the Records Section. According to Dominy, with respect to the February request, Pearce contacted Mancusi-Ungaro, an EPA attorney adviser on Everglades water issues, and Harper, an environmental scientist who had reviewed State of Florida water quality standards, and asked them to search for records responsive to the Tribe's FOIA request and to identify other personnel who would also have responsive records. Additional EPA Region 4 employees conducted searches of their files, including. Fritz Wagener and Gail Mitchell. Moreover, documents were produced by Jim Keating from EPA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. After a number of additional personnel were identified as persons who may also have responsive documents (sixteen in all), those EPA employees were provided with the Tribe's February FOIA request and asked to search all correspondence, electronic transmissions, draft documents, briefing materials, and other relevant materials in any hard copy and electronic files to which they had access. Dominy also averred that a similar search was performed for the supplemental June FOIA request.
Pearce testified that upon receipt of the Tribe's February FOIA, she contacted Mancusi-Ungaro. Additionally, Pearce asked Cecilia Harper, an environmental scientist in the Water Management Division, for names of personnel who would have responsive records. Pearce began searching all EPA programs for information about the February FOIA request. Once she found programs that might have responsive documents, she sent a copy of the February FOIA request to the EPA employees she thought might have documents and delivered a copy to a coordinator in each division. According to Cecilia Harper, she reviewed her e-mails for documents responsive to the Tribe's FOIA request and gathered all of her relevant hard copy documents which she had arranged in binders by subject. Harper testified that she provided to Pearce all responsive emails, in both her archives and her electronic inbox, in addition to all of her hard copy binders.
Daniel Scheidt, a senior water quality scientist at the EPA, testified with respect to the February request that he conducted a similar search of his electronic and hard copy documents. Scheidt indicated that he read the entire document request, numberby-number, looked at each numbered request to determine whether or not he had any documents in his possession that may be responsive, and if he did have any responsive documents, copied them and, produced them. Scheidt indicated that he did not produce publicly available documents because his understanding was that the Tribe did not seek documents in that category. However, during his deposition, Scheidt testified that he realized there may have been some internal EPA notations on certain publicly available documents that would be responsive to the Tribe's request because they would not be in the public domain. Accordingly, after his deposition, Scheidt again reviewed his files and produced thirty additional documents. While Scheidt could not recall personally receiving the Tribe's June FOIA request, he stated in his affidavit that any documents in his possession that were responsive to the. June request would have been produced in response to the February FOIA request.
Finally, Mancusi-Ungaro said that he searched his electronic and hard copy files and produced all documents he believed were responsive. Like Scheidt, Mancusi-Ungaro did not consider publicly available documents to be responsive. Having summarized the relevant EPA evidence before the district court on summary judgment, we now turn to the Tribe's two arguments that the above-described evidence was insufficient for the district court to even consider the issue of reasonableness.
The Tribe first contends that the affidavit of Dominy, the representative designated by the EPA to demonstrate that the search was adequate, is insufficient evidence by which to judge the search's reasonableness because he was not the person who conducted the search and was not even in his position at the time the search was conducted. It is true that Dominy is the current Region 4 Chief of the EPA FOIA and Records Services Division. However, it is also undisputed that Dominy did not personally perform the search regarding the Tribe's FOIA requests; Jennifer Pearce was the employee who coordinated those efforts. The EPA points to at least two other Circuits that have held that the agency employee who actually performed a search need not be the one to supply an affidavit or sworn testimony describing the adequacy of the search so long as an official responsible for supervising the search efforts has provided testimony in one form or another. See Maynard v. C.I.A., 986 F.2d 547, 560 (1st Cir.1993) (holding that affidavits of officials responsible for supervising search efforts are sufficient to fulfill the personal knowledge requirement of Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(e)); Patterson v. I.R.S., 56 F.3d 832, 840-41 (7th Cir.1995) (holding that declarant's reliance on a standard search form completed by his predecessor was appropriate). Although this Circuit has not pronounced a rule requiring testimony from the person who performed the search in order to demonstrate its adequacy under Rule 56, it need not do so in this case. Because the district court below granted depositions of other agents who actually performed the search, and because those depositions were submitted in the Rule 56 record, this court need not reach the issue of whether the Dominy Affidavit, in isolation, would be sufficient to demonstrate the adequacy of the FOIA search. Here, the Tribe not only deposed Dominy, but also Pearce who undisputedly participated in the search. As the district court correctly noted in its summary judgment order in favor of the EPA, whether that affidavit was adequate, in isolation, was irrelevant because the Court . . . granted wide latitude to the Plaintiff in conducting additional discovery.
Thus, the court turns to the second layer of the Tribe's sufficiency argumentthe level of search detail outlined by the testimony as a whole. The Rule 56 record includes five depositions that were taken in this case. In each of those depositions, the Tribe questioned the deponent regarding how he or she conducted a search, which files were reviewed, what search terms were used, how the documents were produced to Pearce, whether any documents were withheld from production, who made the decisions about withholding, and other relevant questions. Pearce testified that she was asked specific questions about the substance of Dominy's Affidavit, including who searched for responsive documents. She corroborated the points in Dominy's Affidavit regarding the people and offices that were contacted. Thus, the Tribe's singular focus on the Dominy Affidavit is misguided. It is irrelevant that Dominy failed to aver that all files likely to contain responsive materials were searched and did not detail the exact procedures used by each individual involved to search for records, including how the records were searched and the search terms used, the type of search performed, or which files were searched. Although Dominy described only in general terms how the EPA logged and filtered the request to various employees throughout the agency (i.e., Dominy's office contacted sixteen EPA employees regarding the Tribe's FOIA requests, that is only one part of the complete picture). The deposition testimony from other individuals who actually performed the search fills in any missing blanks about the specifics of how the search was conducted. To be sure, the Tribe did not have the opportunity to depose all sixteen employees involved in the search in order to ask each and every one of them specific questions about their searches. But that is not the issue here. The Tribe does not contend on appeal that it was erroneously denied adequate discovery. Rather, the question is whether the district court needed testimony before it from each of the sixteen employees that the EPA identified in order to consider' the adequacy of the searchas the Tribe puts it, to have testimony from each individual involved regarding whether they searched the same kinds of records or whether some performed one kind of search and others performed a different kind of search, or even whether all sixteen employees actually searched. [7] The Tribe maintains that such exacting testimony from each person involved is called for in light of decisions such as the D.C. Circuit's opinion in Oglesby v. U.S. Dep't of the Army, 920 F.2d 57 (D.C.Cir. 1990), which requires reasonable detail, that the search method . . . was reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents. Oglesby, 920 F.2d at 68. Specifically, Oglesby held that: [a] reasonably detailed affidavit, setting forth the search terms and the type of search performed, and averring that all files likely to contain responsive materials (if such records exist) were searched, is necessary to afford a FOIA requester an opportunity to challenge the adequacy of the search and to allow the district court to determine' if the search was adequate in order to grant summary judgment. Oglesby, 920 F.2d at 68. Later in Steinberg v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 23 F.3d 548 (D.C.Cir.1994), the D.C. Circuit reiterated that agency affidavits that `do not denote which files were searched, do not reflect any systematic approach to document location, and do not provide information specific enough to enable [the requestor] to challenge the procedures utilized' are insufficient to support summary judgment. Steinberg, 23 F.3d at 552. This Circuit has not imposed the specific requirements set forth in the D.C. Circuit. Nor has it even come close to adopting a more exacting rule like that suggested by the Tribe herea rule that would extend beyond Oglesby and Steinberg to require not just one reasonably detailed affidavit on behalf of the EPA setting forth the required details, but testimony from every participant in the search setting forth terms used, the type of search performed, and averring that all files likely to contain responsive materials (if such records exist) were searched. This Circuit has only stated that the agency must show beyond a material doubt . . . that it has Conducted a search reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents. Ray v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 908 F.2d 1549, 1558 (11th Cir. 1990). To pronounce a rule in this Circuit setting forth the Tribe's requested extension of the D.C. Circuit rule would place too heavy a burden on an agency responding to a FOIA request to provide testimony from each individual involved in the FOIA search. Implicit in the Tribe's argument is its disapproval of the fact that the employees involved in the search maintain their files in individual manners and, hence, went about their searches in individual methods. No one, however, testified that they held back documents that they thought were responsive with the exception of the now disputed publicly available documents (addressed infra ). Thus, the better course here is to ask whether, based upon this court's prior precedent and the plethora of evidence in this case, the Dominy Affidavit, in conjunction with the other deposition testimony provided, provided sufficient evidence for the trial court to determine whether the EPA conducted a search reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents. Ray v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 908 F.2d 1549, 1558 (11th Cir.1990) (quotations omitted), rev'd on other grounds, U.S. Dep't of State v. Ray, 502 U.S. 164, 112 S.Ct. 541, 116 L.Ed.2d 526 (1991). We answer this threshold question in the affirmative.