Madel v. DOJ, No. 13-2832, 2017 WL 111302 (D. Minn. Jan. 11, 2017) (Magnuson, J.)

Madel v. DOJ, No. 13-2832, 2017 WL 111302 (D. Minn. Jan. 11, 2017) (Magnuson, J.)

Re: Request for records concerning sales and distribution of oxycodone in Georgia by five different entities

Disposition: Denying defendant's motion for summary judgment

• Exemption 4: The court holds that, "[i]t is the Court's view that company-specific information by the buyer's county, business activity, drug type, transaction date, dosage units, and total grams for the years [plaintiff] requests is not exempt from disclosure under (b)(4) and is reasonably segregable from exempt information in these spreadsheets." "In addition, in light of the release of [one] report . . ., buyer zip codes might also be reasonably segregable and not exempt from disclosure." The court relates that "the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed on a narrow issue: whether the reports contain any information not subject to exemption (b)(4) that is reasonably segregable from exempt information." The court finds that, "[i]n support of their contentions regarding segregability, Defendants rely almost solely on the four companies' objections to the spreadsheets' disclosure." "These objections are stated in broad terms without any specific detail, or even specific justification that the release of any portion of the data will cause the companies competitive harm." "And as [plaintiff] points out, there is no indication whether Defendants sought additional comments from the companies after the release of [one] report . . ., which contains much of the information the companies initially objected to producing, albeit not in company-specific form." "Nor is there any indication that Defendants discussed with the companies whether they considered if any information in the company-specific spreadsheets was segregable."