Court Opinion

ID: 9458231
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:45:59.173686+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:40.951575
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
Legislative history can often be a helpful device for judges in the dark seeking light, as we are here.1 But the legislative history of the Freedom of Information Act is so extensive and so full of internal inconsistencies that Professor Davis has said of it:
Even though the records of the various hearings over a ten year period are voluminous, probably more than ninety-five per cent of the useful legislative history is found in a ten page Senate Committee report and in a fourteen page House Committee report. . . . Committee reports not addressed to the enacted version of the bill do not show the intent of Congress in enacting the statute. They show what the intent of Congress would have been if it had enacted the bill it did not enact.
Davis, The Information Act: A Preliminary Analysis, 34 U.Chi.L.Rev. 761, 762, 791 (1967). Unfortunately, nothing in the two reports Professor Davis mentions sheds any light on the specific question before us.2 That question is whether, once an investigation has been terminated, and utilization of the files for law enforcement purposes is not reasonably likely, “investigatory files compiled for law enforcement purposes” [5 U.S.C. § 552(b) (7)] are exempt from the disclosure requirements of 5 U.S.C. § 552(a) (3). Indeed, our question is narrower still, for a careful district judge specifically framed his order and accompanying memorandum to preserve to the SEC, through in camera production, its exemptions under 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) (4), “commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential,” and (b) (5), “inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.” 3
*819On the narrow question before us reasonable judges may readily differ. I dissent from the views of my brethren because I think the Act contains an underlying recognition that disclosure of the workings of a government bureaucracy, which long since has suffered the “curse of bigness,” can benefit the agency by increasing its sense of responsibility to the public. The Freedom of Information Act has as its aim, in other words, a delegation by Congress to the federal courts of the power to subject agency operations to public perusal. Behind this policy are some of the same considerations which underpin freedom of the press; at the very least the Act was intended to expand the possibility of “participation in decision making by all members of society.” T. Emerson, The System of Freedom of Expression 7 (1970).
It is, therefore, not surprising that other respectable courts have taken a view differing from that of the majority today and of the Fifth Circuit in Evans v. Department of Transportation, 446 F.2d 821 (5th Cir. 1971), cert. denied, 405 U.S. 918, 92 S.Ct. 944, 30 L.Ed.2d 788 (1972), upon which the majority relies.4 In Bristol-Meyers Co. v. FTC, 138 U.S.App.D.C. 22, 424 F.2d 935, cert. denied, 400 U.S. 824, 91 S.Ct. 46, 27 L.Ed.2d 52 (1970), the District of Columbia Court of Appeals declared that the “investigatory files” exemption is available to the agency only “[i]f further adjudicatory proceedings are imminent.” 424 F.2d at 939. Prevention of “premature discovery by a defendant” is the purpose of the exemption according to the Fourth Circuit. Wellford v. Hardin, 444 F.2d 21, 23 (4th Cir. 1971). Judge Higginbotham has put it that the purpose is “to avoid a premature disclosure of an agency’s case when engaged in law enforcement activities.” Cooney v. Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., 288 F.Supp. 708, 711-712 (E.D.Pa.1968) (emphasis original). He looks at the exemptions, quite practically, as a codification of existing judically and congressionally created exceptions. Id. at 712.5
*820An analysis of the prior ease law discloses a number of times when government agencies have been required, on a showing of good cause, to produce documentary material obtained in the course of an investigation. Disclosure of grand jury minutes, for example, has been ordered in private antitrust cases involving electric companies. Atlantic City Electric Co. v. A. B. Chance Co., 313 F.2d 431 (2d Cir. 1963) (per curiam) (minutes turned over to antitrust plaintiff) ; accord, Consolidated Edison Co. v. Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co., 217 F.Supp. 36 (S.D.N.Y.1963). See also Illinois v. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 50 F.R.D. 37 (N.D.Ill.1969) (children’s books antitrust suit). Documents possessed by the Internal Revenue Service that bear directly upon disputed tax calculations have also been disclosed by court order. Timken Roller Bearing Co. v. United States, 38 F.R.D. 57 (N.D.Ohio 1964); accord, United States v. Gates, 35 F.R.D. 524 (D.Colo.1964); United States v. San Antonio Portland Cement Co., 33 F.R.D. 513 (W.D.Tex. 1963). The United States Justice Department itself has been the subject of disclosure orders. Royal Exchange Assurance v. McGrath, 13 F.R.D. 150 (S.D.N.Y.1952) (Attorney General ordered to produce for trustee investigative reports regarding conduct and control of foreign corporation; Zimmerman v. Poindexter, 74 F.Supp. 933 (D.Hawaii 1947) (FBI ordered to produce investigative reports pertaining to plaintiff’s alleged wrongful imprisonment).
I am of the view that the federal courts can amply safeguard investigatory agency procedures and informants by in camera examination of the files in doubtful cases. Thus the fear of exposure underlying the majority’s view is largely groundless. The argument to which the SEC is ultimately reduced is that it should not be required to disclose its files to just “any person.” The fact is that plaintiffs here are or were in litigation with Occidental Petroleum. Thus, if the words “any person” mean any person with standing, plaintiffs here surely have it.
I would affirm the opinion and judgment below.

. Perhaps legislative history should be utilized only when it is subordinated, like the words of the act, to the “principal task of deriving the specific intent of Congress from a full and sympathetic understanding of its purpose.” Cox, Judge Learned Hand and the Interpretation of Statutes, 60 Harv.L.Rev. 370, 381-82 (1947).

. An early Senate report does indicate that the Act “is not a withholding statute but a disclosure statute . . . . ” Senate Rep. No. 813, 89th Cong., 1st Sess. 5 (1965).

. Frankel v. SEC, 336 F.Supp. 675 (S.D.N.Y., Oct. 20, 1971 [mem.]; Nov. 5, 1971 [order]). By thus narrowing his decree, Judge Lasker takes away the force of the majority’s argument that future law enforcement efforts could be hindered by revealing the agency’s investigatory techniques and procedures or the names of informants. It seems to me that under subsections (b) (4) and (b) (5) adequate protection of these legitimate agency objectives is assured. Moreover, while the government may have a privilege not to disclose the identity of informers, *819Roviaro v. United States, 353 U.S. 53, 59-61, 77 S.Ct. 623, 1 L.Ed.2d 639 (1957), here the SEC has already disclosed the names of the witnesses who gave testimony to it. The SEC concedes that the subsection (b) (4) and (b) (5) exemptions would cover much of the material in their investigative files but worries lest Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. v. Renegotiation Board, 138 U.S.App.D.C. 147, 425 F.2d 578 (1970), will cause it some work by its requirement of “suitable deletions” by the agency from each document to make the protection of the exemption available. 425 F.2d at 581. See also Getman v. NLRB, 450 F.2d 670, 673 (D.C.Cir.1971); Soucie v. David, 448 F.2d 1067, 1078 (D.C.Cir. 1971). This is a typical agency argument and it really doesn’t rise to a level warranting judicial reply.

. Our own case, LaMorte v. Mansfield, 438 F.2d 448, 451 (2d Cir. 1971), doesn’t go to the specific question here.

. The commentaries in point shed no more light than the legislative history. One, less a carefully reasoned legal analysis than it is a polemic, as its name implies, is Katz, The Games Bureaucrats Play: Hide and Seek under the Freedom of Information Act, 58 Texas L.Rev. 1261 (1970). Ms. Katz does make the point that the exceptions — including the “investigatory files” exception — are “administrative loopholes through which federal officials escape with records intact.” Id. at 1262, and see 1277-84. She goes on to say that “[ojnee litigation is concluded, disclosure is impliedly required.” Id. at 1279. And she adds :
Admittedly it may sometimes be difficult for the agency itself to know whether an enforcement action will be brought in the near future. As long as there is a realistic prospect that such an action will be instituted, and as long as administrators endeavor to make the enforcement decision as quickly as possible, the exemption should apply. But the exemption should not avail an agency that claims only that its investigatory files are “open” and therefore always subject to use in hypothetical future enforcement proceedings.
Id. at 1280 n. 100.
Another Naderite, Peter H. Sehuck, Esq., has recently told a congressional committee that the Act “has foundered on the rocks of bureaucratic self-interest and secrecy.” N.Y. Times, Mar. 15, 1972, at 19, col. 1 (city ed.). I would suggest *820that it has foundered on the rocks of equivocal draftsmanship. One of its pertinent critical failings has been pinpointed by Professor Davis:
The Act is faulty in its use of the unsatisfactory term “files.” Much of the contents of investigatory files compiled for purposes that may include law enforcement should not be exempt from required disclosure.
Davis, The Information Act: A Preliminary Analysis, 34 U.Chi.L.Rev. 761, 800 (1967).