Opinion ID: 77938
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Summary Judgment Regarding Adequacy of FOIA Search

Text: The purpose of FOIA is to encourage public disclosure of information so citizens may understand what, their government is doing. Office of the Capital Collateral Counsel, 331 F.3d at 802. Congress enacted FOIA to enable the public to have access to government information that is unnecessarily shielded from public view. Nadler v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 955 F.2d 1479, 1484 (11th Cir.1992), overruled on other grounds by U.S. Dep't Of Justice v. Landano, 508 U.S. 165, 113 S.Ct. 2014, 124 L.Ed.2d 84 (1993). The Tribe's arguments on appeal, organized in their logical progression, are as follows: (1) as a threshold matter, the evidence presented by the EPA was simply not sufficient to even permit the district court to make a determination on the merits regarding the adequacy and reasonableness of the search; (2) even if the EPA's evidence was sufficient, the trial court improperly resolved disputed issues of fact by granting summary judgment when it should have denied summary judgment and conducted' an evidentiary hearing to resolve numerous inconsistencies in the testimony; and (3) even if the Rule 56 evidence was sufficient and undisputed, the summary judgment record demonstrates that the search was not adequate or reasonable to warrant a grant of summary judgment. Each argument is addressed below in turn.
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.
The Tribe next maintains that even assuming the evidence provided a sufficient basis upon which the court could judge the reasonableness of the search, rather than granting summary judgment, the district court should have conducted an evidentiary hearing to resolve numerous inconsistencies in the testimony. This argument again sets aside the merits question of whether the search was adequate, and instead challenges the district court's definition of certain factual discrepancies as irrelevant. [8] According to the Tribe, the district court inappropriately relied on a sister case from its district for the proposition that an agency is entitled to summary judgment if no material facts are in dispute and if it demonstrates `that each document that falls within the class requested either has been produced . . . or is wholly exempt from the Act's inspection requirements.' Florida Immigrant Advocacy Ctr. v. Nat'l Sec. Agency, 380 F.Supp.2d 1332, 1336-37 (S.D.Fla.2005). Instead, the Tribe believes that, given the number of relevant disputed facts, the district court should have looked to a different case from the Southern District of Florida that advocates conducting an evidentiary hearing to resolve the disputed factual issues. Sun-Sentinel Co. v. US. Dep't of Homeland Sec., 431 F.Supp.2d 1258, 1276 (S.D.Fla. 2006) (disputed issues of material fact made summary judgment in FOIA case inappropriate and the court must hold an evidentiary hearing to resolve the factual issues). The Tribe's argument regarding factual disputes in the Rule 56 record focuses primarily on alleged inconsistencies between the averments in Dominy's Affidavit and the Rule 56 testimony provided by other deponents. In his affidavit, Dominy claimed that, upon receipt of the Tribe's February 18, 2004 FOIA request, his office contacted MancusiUngaro and Harper and asked them to identify other personnel who might have records responsive to the Tribe's request. The Tribe asserts that the district court only considered that portion of the Rule 56 evidence that supported its conclusion that the search was adequate. [9] Specifically, the Tribe points to three categories of disputed ed evidence that it believes should have prevented the grant of summary judgment: (1) evidence from Scheidt that he did not recall responding to the June request; (2) deposition testimony that contradicts Dominy's Affidavit that responsive documents were produced, and demonstrates that certain documents were not produced even though they were responsive; and (3) evidence regarding who should have been contacted for records and who actually coordinated the search. The court will address each argument in turn.
The Tribe points again and again to evidence that at least one employee on Dominy's listDan Scheidt, the lead scientist on the phosphorus criterionappears to have been overlooked with respect to the search in response to the June 3rd FOIA request concerning the default phosphorus criterion. Dominy claimed that each person listed in his Affidavit received a copy of the February 18th FOIA request and was again contacted about the Tribe's June 3rd FOIA request. Dominy also stated that all employees working on the EPA's phosphorus criterionpresumably including Scheidtsearched for responsive records. However, Scheidt testified that he did not recall providing documents responsive to the Tribe's June 3rd FOIA request which targeted documents concerning his area of expertise. The district court's order recognized that Scheidt [] indicated he did not recall responding to Plaintiff's second request. The. Tribe contends that whether Scheidt received the June 3rd request, and whether he ever responded it to it, are issues of material fact that are relevant to the adequacy of the search and that the district court should have ordered a new search so that Scheidt could determine whether he had additional documents responsive to Plaintiff's requests. The EPA maintains that the Tribe is simply mistaken and that there is not an issue of material fact regarding whether Scheidt was ever sent the June 2004 FOIA request given his testimony that no new documents would have been produced after the February FOIA. The undisputed testimony indicates the following: (1) Scheidt testified at his deposition that he had other documents responsive to the Tribe's FOIA requests that he did not produce because he assumed the Tribe had them; (2) Scheidt further testified that he excluded from his disclosure scientific publications, agency reports, journal articles and Florida Environmental Regulation Commission (ERC) testimony; (3) after the deposition, the EPA provided to the Tribe more than 30 documents from Scheidt; and (4) Scheidt later provided a sworn Affidavit stating that any documents in his possession that would have been responsive to the June 2004 FOIA request were also responsive to the February 2004 FOIA request that he did receive and to which he did respond. [10] Even now, after having received additional documents from Scheidt, the Tribe still believes that the EPA's search was not adequate to uncover all Scheidt's documents based solely on the fact that he did not recall seeing or responding to the Tribe's June 3rd request. Scheidt has admitted that he did not recall the request specifically, but he has also explained his efforts to locate responsive documents and produce them after the time that the request was made. Even if he did not lay eyes on the request in written form, his post-request search would have covered any documents responsive thereto. Therefore, his admission does not create a disputed fact. The undisputed evidence indicates that Scheidt was deposed and asked questions about what documents he had and what he did to search for documents that would have satisfied both requests. We find that the district court did not err in finding that Scheidt's testimony was undisputed and that his testimony did not create a material issue of fact regarding his search.
Next the Tribe points to several alleged inconsistencies between what the deponents thought they had provided and what was actually provided. For example, Scheidt testified that he had produced documents responsive to the Tribe's FOIA request concerning effects on the Tribe as a downstream user. The Tribe believes, however, that based upon a review of the document list and Vaughn Index, those documents were not provided. Additionally, Scheidt admitted that he failed to produce notes of ERC meetingsnotes that the Tribe believes were clearly requested by the February 18th request and should have been produced. Finally, Mancusi-Ungaro admitted at his deposition that the EPA had failed to produce a document he had faxed to the State of Florida that was responsive to the Tribe's FOIA requests. Mancusi-Ungaro also said that he could not recall whether he sent other documents to the State of Florida that would have been responsive to the FOIA requests. Based principally on these examples, the Tribe points to inconsistencies between what the EPA averred was provided and what the testimony shows should have been provided but was not. The EPA does not offer a specific response to each of the documents identified by the Tribe above, opting instead to argue generally that an agency is not required to prove that every single responsive document was produced to demonstrate the adequacy of the search. See Nation Magazine, Washington Bureau v. U.S. Customs Serv., 71 F.3d 885, 892 n. 7 (D.C.Cir.1995). Accordingly, the EPA maintains that a search is not presumed unreasonable simply because an agency failed to produce all relevant documents. Nation Magazine, 71 F.3d at 892 n. 7. c. Evidence Regarding Other Employees Who Had Records Who Were Not Contacted and Who Actually Coordinated the Search The Tribe next highlights what it considers to be contradictory evidence regarding how the search was conducted. First, the Tribe notes that even though Dominy lists Richard Harvey (Director of the EPA's South Florida office in West Palm Beach and an employee of Region 4 Water Division) as a person who received both requests, there is no documented proof in the record that Harvey ever received or responded to the requests. Mancusi-Ungaro testified that he does not recall giving Harvey's name to Pearce, and Harper said she did not coordinate with Harvey to gather documents. Nevertheless, despite the Tribe's arguments, testimony from Pearce indicates that she gave Harvey the FOIA requests. Further, in a search of this magnitude, the lack of witness recollection of specific contact with Harvey does not create a material disputed fact. [11] The Tribe also accuses Dominy and Pearce of misrepresenting that Mancusi-Ungaro had a more active role in coordinating the search, while Mancusi-Ungaro testified that he merely searched for documents in his possession, but had no role in contacting employees or conducting the search. Moreover, the Tribe asserts that the EPA's claim (through the testimony of Pearce) that Harper was the coordinator chosen to filter the FOIA requests and gather documents from other employees was contradicted by Harper's own testimony that, with regard to the February request, she delivered only her own documents to Pearce. Indeed, contrary to both the Dominy Affidavit and Pearce deposition, other evidence in the record suggests that, as to the June request, Harper did not provide names or act as a coordinator. Again, the EPA does not specifically respond to any of the Tribe's assertions or the supporting evidence, averring only generally that the Tribe repeatedly mischaracterizes Pearce's role as having searched for responsive records when, in fact, Pearce coordinated the search for responsive records. The EPA's failure to address these issues head on is not only troubling, but fatal to its position on this appeal. The evidence to which the Tribe points goes beyond suggesting that the EPA failed to produce a stray document or two. Rather, the inconsistencies in the testimony indicate that the process employed by the. EPA was defective, thereby rendering its FOIA search and response inadequate. Accordingly, we find there are material issues of fact regarding whether those conducting the search reasonably made an effort to contact all employees who had responsive records and whether the search efforts were properly coordinated. For this reason alone, the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the EPA on the adequacy of the search was inappropriate.
In the, final alternative, the Tribe maintains that even if the evidence before the district court was sufficient to determine the adequacy of the search and was undisputed, it did not demonstrate that the search was adequate and reasonable to warrant the granting of summary judgment. Specifically, the Tribe takes issue with the EPA's explanations for: (1) not producing any documents in the publicly available category; and (2) belatedly producing 160 documents as a supplemental FOIA response.
The mainand perhaps bestargument presented by the Tribe is that the EPA inappropriately excluded from its FOIA production all documents they deemed to be publicly available, and that the district court improperly found the evidence on this issue to be undisputed and the exclusion to be reasonable. We have reviewed this evidence de novo, and find that a material issue of fact exists with respect to that exclusion of documents. The undisputed evidence indicates the following. When the EPA began the process of responding to the Tribe's February FOIA request, both Scheidt and Mancusi-Ungaro told Pearce that the responsive documents might be voluminous. In light of this suggestion and the sheer number of EPA sectors and employees initially contacted about the request, the EPA wrote to the Tribe on March 2, 2004 requesting additional time until July 2004 to respond. In its June 2004 reply to the EPA, the Tribe stated: we [do] not agree the request [is] voluminous . . . and . . . we [have] no desire to have EPA produce voluminous publicly released documents which we already have.  (emphasis added). The EPA interpreted [12] the Tribe's desire not to receive voluminous publicly released documents it already had to be license for the EPA to exclude all publicly available documents in addition to all duplicate documents. EPA witnesses alluded to an e-mail issued by Pearce to those who had been asked to produce documents indicating that certain voluminous and publicly available documents should be excluded from their production. [13] The Tribe's February 18th FOIA request on its face seeks any and all records, and even the Tribe's June 3rd FOIA request, which contains the operative statement about voluminous publicly available documents, also asks for all records. Nevertheless, the district court concluded that it is entirely reasonable to exclude documents available to the public from a FOIA request, especially where the Plaintiff specifically exclaims that it has `no desire to have EPA produce voluminous publicly released documents.' In essence, the court drew its own conclusion about what the Tribe could reasonably requestit saw no reason why it should require the EPA to produce documents that are available to the general public. Pearce testified that upon receipt of the Tribe's February FOIA, she contacted Mancusi-Ungaro. Additionally, Pearce asked Cecelia 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. The fallacy of the EPA's logic, however, is that it focuses on what the Tribe could have, or should have, reasonably requestednot on what the EPA should have reasonably found or produced in response to what was actually sought by the FOIA requests as written. The question of whether the Tribe's FOIA requests were reasonable as written was not before the trial court. Rather, the focus should have been on whether the EPA's interpretation of, and efforts to fulfill, those requests were reasonable and adequate. Here the undisputed evidencehighlighted by the EPA's own omission of critical language from the Tribe's requestdemonstrates that the EPA's self-imposed limitations on its search were unreasonable and inaccurately depicted what the Tribe really sought. Indeed, the conclusion that it is entirely reasonable to exclude documents available to the public from a FOIA request comes dangerously close to taking on a legislative role i.e., establishing a new FOIA wholesale exemption for all public, or publicly available, documents that does not exist in the statute as one of the nine exemptions legislated by Congress. Moreover, the conclusion that it seems reasonable to exclude publicly available documents when responding to a FOIA request begs the question. Unless a document falls into one of the nine recognized exemptions from disclosure under FOIA, it is due to be disclosed. [14] Additional evidence before the district court also indicated that the EPA's limited interpretation of the June FOIA request was unreasonable in the Rule 56 record, but that evidence was not mentioned in the district court's summary judgment opinion. Apparently, after the June request was issued, the Tribe clarified its earlier instruction not to produce voluminous publicly available documents the Tribe already possessed. In fact, the Tribe and EPA agreed that only certain specifically-identified documents should be excluded as part of that category. Joette Lorion, the Tribal representative who actually participated in the conversation with the EPA (at that agency's request) regarding which documents could be excluded from production, filed an Affidavit in the district court stating that she never told the EPA it could exclude all publicly released or available documents. Lorion claimed that the only documents the Tribe agreed that the EPA did not have to produce were voluminous documents publicly available on the EPA web site, such as the EPA's Water Quality Standards Handbook. Lorion specifically disputed the testimony of EPA employees that suggested the Tribe's FOIA request did not seek State of Florida documents in the possession of the EPA. Lorion also disputed that the scientific documents the EPA admittedly failed to provide were voluminous, were publicly available, or could be found on the EPA or State of Florida web sites. [15] The district court's summary judgment analysis does not even mention the Lorion Affidavit or her denial that the Tribe told the EPA that it could exclude broad categories of documents. Moreover, the EPA's brief to this Court does not directly address the district court's omission of the Lorion Affidavit in its recitation of the evidence, nor does it challenge Lorion's statement that she met with EPA officials and specifically told them what publicly available documents to exclude. Rather, the EPA takes issue with Lorion's conclusion regarding which scientific documents were publicly available, maintaining that it was perfectly reasonable for the EPA to have excluded many of those documents. [16] These arguments simply do not diminish the effect of the Lorion affidavit on the Rule 56 record. In addition to Lorion's Affidavit, there is Rule 56 record evidence indicating that the timing of the EPA's decision to exclude publicly available documents was somewhat dubious. The Tribe's supplemental request that mentioned, for the first time, the phrase publicly available documents was not submitted to the EPA until June 2004. Even assuming that the Tribe's desire was an instruction to the EPA not to produce documents in that category, that instruction undisputedly did not apply to the first February 2004 FOIA request. Thus, it makes no logical sense that all of the EPA deponents could have concluded that the Tribe was not seeking publicly available documents at the time of the February and June FOIA requests. Because the publicly available documents language made its first appearance in June 2004, the EPA had no basis upon which to exclude publicly available documents of any kind from the February 2004 search. These facts not only demonstrate a disputed issue of material fact, but also raise substantial concerns about the manner in which the EPA responded to the Tribe's requests. We also question whether the EPA properly interpreted the Tribe's desire regarding voluminous publicly available documents in light of the need to construe a FOIA request liberally. Florida Immigrant Advocacy Ctr. v. National Security Agency, 380 F.Supp.2d 1332, 1345 (S.D.Fla.2006) (quoting LaCedra v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, 317 F.3d 345, 348 (D.C.Cir.2003)). Even if the EPA found the scope of the Tribe's June 3rd request to be ambiguous, it was obliged under FOIA to interpret both that request, and certainly the unambiguous February request before it, liberally in favor of disclosure. In light of this obligation, the EPA could not, consistent with its statutory responsibilities under FOIA, equate the Tribe's statement that it had no desire [for the EPA] to produce voluminous publicly released documents which we already have  (emphasis added) with tacit permission to blanketly exclude from production  all publicly available documents regardless of whether they were voluminous and regardless of whether the Tribe already had them. As the Tribe notes, there is a significant difference between the omission of voluminous publicly available documents that we already have and disregarding any and all publicly available documents. [17] For all of these reasons, after a de novo review and under the circumstances presented here, we find that the EPA's self-imposed limitation to blanketly exclude all publicly available documents from its FOIA disclosures raises at least a material issue of fact.
Next, the Tribe points to the 160 additional documents that, were found after Dominy and Pearce had averred that all responsive documents had been produced or properly withheld under a FOIA exception as evidence that the search was inadequate. On two occasions after this litigation ensued, the EPA provided additional documents to the Tribe130 documents previously withheld from production for a claimed privilege that the EPA later reconsidered [18] and thirty additional documents produced after Scheidt's deposition which included e-mail messages and copies of presentations in addition to handwritten notes. [19] The Tribe notes both the significant number of supplemental documents (especially when compared to the two and one-half boxes initially provided) and the timing of the productions as indicative of the search's inadequacy. It is true that the first supplemental production of 130 documents occurred nearly twenty months after the Tribe's initial FOIA request, and almost five months after litigation ensued. Nonetheless, the Tribe has not specifically argued that any of the 130 documents (released at the discretion of the EPA OGC and Assistant Regional Administrator Wright) fail to qualify for a privilege. Instead, the Tribe asserts only generally that those documents should have been produced with the EPA's initial disclosure, and focuses on the timing of the EPA's determination that the 130 documents are privileged. [20] It is true, of course, that an agency generally has discretion to disclose exempt information if it sees fit to do so. Chrysler Corp. v. Brown, 441 U.S. 281, 293-94, 99 S.Ct. 1705, 60 L.Ed.2d 208 (1979). The Tribe has not challenged the basis for that claim of exemption, but insteadironicallycriticizes the EPA for changing its mind about the claimed exemption at such a late date. This does not change the fact, however, that the decision to assert or withdraw a proper claim of exemption is solely within an agency's discretion. With respect to his production of the thirty documents, Scheidt testified that he genuinely believed that the Tribe said it had no desire to have EPA produce voluminous publicly released documents and therefore, when the Tribe indicated in Scheidt's deposition that it was interested in his personal notes on public documents, mostly ERC public meeting handouts, Scheidt searched for them. Although the Tribe complains that the Scheidt supplemental production contained e-mails that were not personal notes, the EPA maintains that the fact that some de minimus number of documents were overlooked in the initial FOIA search does not prove that the search was in bad faith or inadequate. This Circuit has not established a rule regarding the inference to be drawn from the late discovery and late release of additional documents responsive to a FOIA request. Relying on Goland v. CIA, 607 F.2d 339, 370 (D.C.Cir.1978), the Tribe contends that the `[d]iscovery of additional documents is more probative that the search was not thorough than if no other documents were found to exist.' The Tribe further contends that a requestor may support an allegation of bad faith by presenting evidence that additional, reasonable documents exist. See Ground Saucer Watch, Inc. v. CIA, 692 F.2d 770, 771 (D.C.Cir.1981). Citing a different case from a district court in the D.C. Circuit, the EPA casts a different light on the late document productions, theorizing that the further search and additional release are not an indication of the inadequacy of its search but further evidence of the agency's dedication to fully complying with its FOIA obligations. See Western Center For Journalism v. I.R.S, 116 F.Supp.2d 1, 10 (D.D.C.2000) (finding that an agency's release of additional responsive records mistakenly omitted from its initial response did not demonstrate bad faith since it is unreasonable to expect even the most exhaustive search to uncover every responsive file; what is expected of a law-abiding agency is that the agency admit and correct error when error is revealed). The EPA also reiterates that FOIA requires an agency to conduct a reasonable search, but that search need not be perfect in order to be reasonable. See Meeropol v. Meese, 790 F.2d 942, 956 (D.C.Cir.1986) ([A] search need not be perfect, only adequate, and adequacy is measured by the reasonableness of the effort in light of the specific request.). [21] Thus, a valid question before this court is what inference, if any, can be or should be drawn from the late production or disclosure of FOIA documents. We are not certain that a one size fits all answer to that question exists. Rather than announcing that a certain inference can always be drawn from such a late production, we believe that the better course is to evaluate the reasoning behind the delay. In this case, because the EPA has offered a reasonable explanation for the late production of the two categories of documents in this case, the court finds that the district court did not err when it failed to draw any adverse interest against the EPA due to its late disclosure of the documents in question.