FOIA

Meeting the “public benefit” standard in FOIA attorney fees cases.

In FOIA attorney fee cases, courts have created a false dichotomy between those requests for information that are in the public interest and those that further a private commercial interest, except those private commercial interests represented by mainstream media.  This distinction fails to consider that the commercial frequently becomes political.  For example, look at what …

Meeting the “public benefit” standard in FOIA attorney fees cases. Read More »

Judge Randolph’s Concurrence in Burka v US Dept. of Health and Human Services

I have just started looking into FOIA Attorney Fees, and one thing I had found curious is that even though the statutory provision for attorney fees for FOIA applicants has fewer criteria than other provisions, such as EAJA, the courts have applied additional criteria to FOIA attorney fees, making an application MORE difficult.  I wrote …

Judge Randolph’s Concurrence in Burka v US Dept. of Health and Human Services Read More »

Plain text readings of EAJA and FOIA fee shifting statutes don’t tell the whole story: the test for FOIA attorney fees.

Although the statute for attorney fee awards in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases has fewer conditions on such awards than the statutes for attorney fee awards in the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), courts have imposed their own conditions on FOIA attorney fees that are stricter than those for EAJA.  In this post, I …

Plain text readings of EAJA and FOIA fee shifting statutes don’t tell the whole story: the test for FOIA attorney fees. Read More »