Establishing an Adequate Search & Why “Custodians [Cannot] be Trusted to Run Effective Searches of Their Own Files”
Nat’l Day Laborer Org. Network v. United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement Agency, — F. Supp. 2d —, 2012 WL 2878130 (S.D.N.Y. July 13, 2012)
In this FOIA case, Judge Shira Scheindlin addressed the adequacy of the government’s search for information responsive to plaintiffs’ substantial FOIA request.
This case addresses plaintiffs’ request for information pursuant to the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and their assertions that defendants’ searches for such information were inadequate. In its analysis, the court expressly acknowledged that “the search obligations under FOIA are not identical to those under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,” but nonetheless reasoned that “much of the logic behind the increasingly well-developed caselaw on e-discovery searches is instructive in the FOIA context . . . .”