Vidal-Martinez v. ICE, No. 20-7772, 2023 WL 2477537 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 13, 2023) (Kennelly, J.)
Date
Vidal-Martinez v. ICE, No. 20-7772, 2023 WL 2477537 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 13, 2023) (Kennelly, J.)
Re: Request for records concerning plaintiff’s habeas corpus petition
Disposition: Denying plaintiff’s interim motion for attorney fees and costs
- Attorney Fees, Eligibility: “The Court . . . declines to award costs to [plaintiff] because he has not carried his burden of showing he substantially prevailed in this litigation.”
First, the court holds that “[plaintiff] simply did not prevail by judicial order in this case.” “None of the referenced actions by the Court altered the legal relationship of the parties or granted [plaintiff] relief on the merits.” The court initially holds that “[t]here is no question that, overall, ICE was the prevailing party in this case; the Court dismissed [plaintiff’s] claims against the agency with prejudice.” “But [plaintiff] bases his fee petition on the notion that he ‘prevailed’ on two issues – namely, ICE’s disclosure of records and his initial objections to ICE’s disclosure – before the Court entered final judgment against him based on a third issue, the propriety of ICE’s redactions of the disclosed records.” The court relates that “[Plaintiff] attempts to characterize several of the Court’s minute entries as ‘ordering’ the relief he sought and thus entitling him to fees under section 552(a)(4)(E)(i)(I).” “This contention lacks merit, as neither of the orders found at [the] docket entries [cited by plaintiff] can plausibly be construed as ‘judicial order[s], or [ ] enforceable written agreement[s] or consent decree[s]’ through which [plaintiff] obtained relief.”
The court relates that “the parties filed an initial joint status report on March 15, 2021 in which they stated that both parties wished to continue an upcoming status hearing from March 22, 2021 to a later date to allow ICE – which at that point had already provided [plaintiff] with an interim response to his first request – more time to submit a final response to [plaintiff’s] FOIA request.” “Based on that status report and the subsequent motion to continue that [plaintiff] filed, the Court continued the March 22 status hearing to April 27, 2021.” “[Plaintiff] contends that because the Court granted the continuance requested, ‘[t]his Court explicitly adopted [the status] report.’” “[Plaintiff] further contends that, ‘[b]ecause the Court adopted a joint stipulation requiring document production, Plaintiff substantially prevailed by judicial order.’” The court finds that “[t]his is a strained reading of the events.” “The parties’ initial joint status report can hardly be construed as a ‘joint stipulation requiring document production.’” “And even if it could be read that way, the Court does not agree with [plaintiff] that the Court ‘explicitly adopted’ it simply by granting an extension of time or that the Court otherwise ordered ICE to produce records at any point in the litigation.” The court finds that other cases in the district cited by plaintiff “are not at all analogous to this case, as they involved more substantive orders.” “The Court’s resetting of a status hearing in the present case based on an agreement between the parties cannot reasonably be compared to the orders in these two cases, both of which directed the agencies, in plain terms, to produce the requested material to the plaintiff.”
“[Plaintiff] further contends that ‘[he] also substantially prevailed by judicial order because, even before the March 15 joint status report, this Court supervised the process by which Defendants released responsive documents.’” “[Plaintiff] then references a routine case management order granting ICE an extension to answer [plaintiff’s] amended complaint as ‘impliedly’ ordering ICE to respond to his FOIA requests.” “But setting a deadline for ICE to respond to the amended complaint cannot fairly be characterized as a direction to ICE to respond to [plaintiff’s] requests.”
Second, the court finds that “[plaintiff] cannot be considered a prevailing party under the catalyst theory.” The court relates that “ICE made its first and second productions of records on March 12 and April 9, 2021.” “Because the documents disclosed by ICE included redactions, the Court entered a minute order directing ‘[plaintiff] to provide [ICE] with any objections to exemptions.’” “[Plaintiff] complied with the Court’s order and submitted objections, and ICE subsequently produced parts of documents that it had previously exempted.” “[Plaintiff] contends both that ICE’s initial response and its later supplement to that response (eliminating some redactions) amount to a victory that entitles him to recover attorney’s fees under section 552(a)(4)(E)(ii)(II) because ICE voluntarily changed its position.” “But [the court finds that] he has not established that ICE ‘changed’ its position, as the statute requires.” “Nothing in the record suggests that ICE ever took the position that it would not produce nonexempt records responsive to [plaintiff’s] request.” “Instead, the agency has consistently stated that it responds to requests in the order they are received and that – due to administrative delays in FOIA request processing – it could not have responded to [plaintiff] any sooner.” “The Court also finds persuasive the cases cited by ICE . . . in which courts have rejected . . . a catalyst theory-based fee petition when the delays were caused only by administrative backlog; in that situation there is no ‘change’ in the government’s position other than its newfound ability to process the request.” “Regarding the redactions, [plaintiff] has also failed to provide evidence to suggest that ICE was not planning [to] provide records it [d]eemed responsive and nonexempt unless and until it was forced to by the litigation.” “ICE reasonably disagreed with [plaintiff] about what was exempt under FOIA, which is presumably why the disclosed documents were redacted in the first place.” “And ultimately, the Court resolved the remaining redaction issues in ICE’s favor at summary judgment.” “This intervening supplement by ICE represents not ‘a voluntary or unilateral change in position’ but rather a good-faith effort to resolve as much of [plaintiff’s] outstanding request that it legally could.”
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District Court opinions
Attorney Fees
Updated March 31, 2023