Court Opinion

ID: 9472442
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:00:13.881433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:56.193695
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
In awarding fees, the district judge did not apply the standards of the Equal Access to Justice Act. He relied instead upon the criteria of the Civil Rights Attorneys’ Fees Awards Act, 42 U.S.C.A. § 1988. Under the circumstances, it seems to me that the most appropriate thing for an appellate court to do would be to vacate the award and remand the ease to the district court for application of the appropriate standards to the facts of the ease, with which, of course, the district court is intimately acquainted.
If we are to weigh the positions of the parties in light of the relevant standards, however, I would conclude that the positions of the government were substantially justified.
*49The plaintiffs, Martin and West, are high level managers, apparently having access to documents and materials not producible under the Freedom of Information Act. The Department’s initial concern was clearly that the plaintiffs should not produce for use of their lawyers materials which were exempt from compulsory production under the FOIA, and that they should not be the judges of any claim they might assert that specific materials were not exempt. In short, the Department’s position seems to have been that these employees, who had declared their intention to participate in adverse litigation against the Department, should proceed as other private litigants must proceed, obtaining information in the pretrial discovery process, with an appropriate opportunity for the Department to assert any claim that particular material was within one or more of the exemptions of the FOIA.
On its face, this would seem to present no great First Amendment problem. Though the plaintiffs prevailed on their First Amendment claim in Martin II, Martin v. Lauer, 686 F.2d 24 (D.C.Cir.1982), they did so only because the court reasoned that the lawyer was ethically bound not to disclose any information obtained from her clients without their authorization, and her clients, the employees, could be prohibited from authorizing any disclosure of exempt information. Were that not so, the court said, the balance might well have been tipped the other way. Thus, the Department’s understandable concern about public disclosure was substantially obviated.
I do not understand that the Privacy Act came into the case as a proffered defense to the plaintiffs’ First Amendment claim. The plaintiffs prevailed on the First Amendment claim in Martin II, though the court did not decide the Privacy Act question. Information protected by the Privacy Act was simply another category of information the Department sought to protect against disclosure, and that presented to the court in Martin II a question which the court characterized as difficult, notwithstanding the fact that disclosure could be limited to the plaintiffs’ lawyer. It declined to decide the question, remanded it to the district court with the suggestion that there might be no real controversy about it.
This was evidently based upon statements by the plaintiffs’ lawyer that she wanted no information protected by the Privacy Act, but she and the plaintiffs continued to litigate the question. They were not forced to do that. They could have ended that phase of the controversy by tendering a stipulation to the effect that no information protected by the Privacy Act would be submitted to or received by her. That was substantially what occurred on remand. As a result, the plaintiffs were not prevailing parties within the meaning of the EAJA, and on this basis alone are not entitled to attorneys’ fees on this issue.
The Department had no means of knowing what information might be tendered to the plaintiffs' lawyer. It seems to me it was thoroughly justified in asserting the position that no material protected by the Privacy Act should be submitted to her. The fact that the Privacy Act question remained in litigation as long as it did seems to me the fault of the plaintiffs rather than the fault of the Department. Had the plaintiffs consented to an order forbidding any violation of the Privacy Act, the matter would have been put to rest. Without that kind of enforceable disclaimer, however, it seems to me the Department was justified in its position that the court should forbid disclosure of information in violation of the Privacy Act.
While I would prefer to have the district court pass upon these matters in the first instance, it seems to me that all of the litigating positions of the Department in this case were justified within the meaning of the EAJA.