The New York City Department of Education [DOE] denied Petitioner's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request on the grounds that it did not seek "a record reasonably described". Supreme Court denied Petition's appeal seeking a court order directing DOE to conduct "an adequate search of responsive records, or in the alternative for a framed issues hearing." The Appellate Division unanimously affirmed the Supreme Court's decision, holding it was not affected by an error of law.
Petitioner sought all emails during a 17-month period between any DOE email address and any email address from a neutral arbitrator's firm. Citing Matter of Puig v New York State Police, 212 AD3d 1025, the Appellate Division said the administrative record and the DOE's affidavits demonstrate "that the descriptions provided are insufficient for purposes of extracting or retrieving the requested document[s] from the virtual files through an electronic word search ... [by] name or other reasonable technological effort".
The Appellate Division's decision notes that "DOE maintains over 1 million email mailboxes". When DOE searched its database using the description given by Petitioner, the "system searches never appeared to end during the course of the day, continuing through the next day, then stopping and timing out".
When Petitioner was twice asked by DOE to provide a narrower timeframe, names or titles of DOE employees who might be custodians of the emails sought, and key terms to be searched, Petitioner "simply refused to do so."
Petitioner subsequently offered a proposed script that would reduce the number of mailboxes being searched which "[n]either the language of the original request nor that of the administrative appeal demonstrates that the limitations now proposed were previously enunciated or provided" to the DOE. The Appellate Division ruled that Supreme Court "appropriately declined to entertain [Petitioner's] proposed means of narrowing the search," which were advanced for the first time in a later reply submitted to Supreme Court.
As DOE did not deny the FOIL request based on Petitioner's seeking voluminous records or claim that conducting the search "would be unduly burdensome or require the creation of new documents," the Appellate Division held Petitioner was not entitled to a hearing to resolve certain purported issues of fact.
Click HERE to access the Appellate Division's decision posted on the Internet.