Opinion ID: 1515884
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Final Contract

Text: Although we have determined that documents reflecting the negotiations between the Authority and its prospective customers are covered by § 38-2-2(4)(B) and are not subject to disclosure under APRA, the final agreement reached between the Authority and the parties representing the golf tournament and the banquet is another matter. We recognize that the hearing justice determined that this material may not be segregable. Specifically, she stated it would be impossible to separate out what [the Journal is] looking for without disclosing what the Court considers is protected under the Act. However, she made no specific finding relative to the entire agreement; nor are we persuaded that portions of the agreement are statutorily exempt from disclosure. Indeed, the statute contemplates a situation in which any reasonably segregable portion of a public record be made available for public inspection. [6] Again, we look to federal case law for guidance on this issue. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has taken the approach that agencies and courts dealing with FOIA requests are obliged to assess whether nonexempt material can reasonably be segregated from exempt material. See Piper & Marbury L.L.P. v. United States Postal Service, No. CIV.A. 99-2383, 2001WL 214217 (D.D.C. Mar.6, 2001). With respect to contracts, the Piper court suggested that no contract could be exempted from FOIA in its entirety. Specifically the court stated that [w]hile contracts may certainly contain information, such as the price of goods being sold, the entire contract itself cannot qualify as `information' in any ordinary sense of either word. Id. at . The thrust of the argument is essentially that a contract cannot consist entirely of confidential information, and, based upon the spirit of FOIA, every effort should be made to segregate those portions of the requested documents that contain information exempted from disclosure. See PHE, Inc. v. Department of Justice, 983 F.2d 248, 252 (D.C.Cir.1993) (where the court held that the district court erred in approving the government's withholding of information in the FOIA request without making an express finding on segregability). In the case at bar, although we are of the opinion that the documents produced during and as a result of the negotiations between the Authority and Mobil Oil, Inc. and the coordinators of the Verrezano Day banquet are not subject to disclosure, we are not convinced that the final contract is exempt. Once the negotiations are solidified into a final agreement between the parties that agreement, or at least portions of the agreement, should then be available to the public pursuant to APRA. [7] Obviously, if the agreement includes confidential or privileged financial information of the customer, such as insurance or financing consideration and profit projections, and is segregable, that limited information is subject to redaction.