Petroleum Information Corp. v. U.S. Dept. of Interior, 91-5059

Citation976 F.2d 1429
Decision Date27 October 1992
Docket NumberNo. 91-5059,91-5059
PartiesPETROLEUM INFORMATION CORPORATION v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, Appellant.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (District of Columbia)

Matthew M. Collette, Attorney, Dept. of Justice, with whom Stuart M. Gerson, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jay B. Stephens, U.S. Atty., and Leonard Schaitman, Attorney, Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., were on the brief, for appellant.

Ronald L. Plesser, with whom Emilio W. Cividanes, Washington, D.C., was on the brief, for appellee.

Before: MIKVA, Chief Judge; EDWARDS and RUTH BADER GINSBURG, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RUTH BADER GINSBURG.

RUTH BADER GINSBURG, Circuit Judge:

Petroleum Information Corporation submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Bureau of Land Management, seeking access to records from a computer data bank containing information on public lands. The data bank, called the Legal Land Description (LLD) file, will be a component of a comprehensive new land records system the Bureau is developing. The Bureau resisted disclosure, arguing that the LLD file is an unfinished "draft" protected by the FOIA's deliberative process privilege. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5) (1988) (Exemption 5). The district court granted summary judgment for Petroleum Information. In accord with the district court, we conclude that the LLD information requested is not shielded by the deliberative process privilege. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment.

I. BACKGROUND

The Bureau of Land Management (Bureau or BLM), a constituent of defendant-appellant Department of the Interior, manages more than 340 million acres of federally-owned lands and 750 million acres of federal mineral holdings. BLM also maintains over one billion paper documents concerning these properties. The Bureau relies on a number of different record-keeping systems in its efforts to maintain complete and accurate information on public lands. The "Master Title Plat" system, for example, is a set of manually prepared maps that depict land ownership and uses within a township. The "Historical Index" is a chronological list of land transactions in a given township. The Bureau now operates two computerized data bases: the Mining Claims Recordation System (MCRS), which records and tracks mining claims and assessments, and the Case Recordation System (CRS), which records and tracks oil and gas leases. Under the current record-keeping arrangements, government officials or private persons who seek full information concerning a particular tract of land may have to examine several sources, including in some cases the original hand-drawn patent.

The Bureau has long recognized that its decentralized record-keeping systems are outdated, sometimes inaccurate, and cumbersome for both the government and the general public to use. In 1982, BLM announced plans for a new system that would integrate information from the diverse paper and electronic sources into a single easy-to-use format. The planned data bank is called the Automated Land and Mineral Record System (ALMRS); as described by the Bureau, ALMRS will consolidate data from existing records into a "comprehensive system to display accurately and consistently the relevant facts concerning land and minerals within BLM's jurisdiction." Brief for Appellant at 6-7.

The Bureau is in the process of developing three separate data banks which will be combined with the existing MCRS and CRS files to form the ALMRS. All three of the new data files, the Bureau acknowledges, are drawn from public documents. The three files themselves, however, are non-public, and the Bureau intends them to remain so until they are released as part of the ALMRS.

Of the three data bases currently under development, the file nearest completion is the Legal Land Description file. The LLD file contains geopolitical information about land, such as its location, the relevant political units and administering agency, survey data, and acreage. As the Bureau informs us, the LLD file is

designed to convert graphic representations contained in the Master Title Plats, BLM planimetric maps, surveys, and various state maps, as well as narrative information in original patent and survey documents, into a series of numerical descriptions.

Brief for Appellant at 8.

The information in the LLD file is now broken down into 17 "data elements"--i.e., categories of information about particular parcels of land. 1 The data elements are The Bureau emphasizes that the creation of the LLD file involves considerably more than a simple transfer of data from one format (the paper source documents) to another (the computerized LLD file). When source documents yield conflicting or incomplete information on a given tract of land, BLM explains, the Bureau's information compilers must correct or perfect the record; to do so, they must exercise discretion in deciding how such tracts should be represented in the LLD file. Before the LLD file is integrated into the ALMRS and made public, the Bureau intends once again to verify the information in the file. Some of the data now in the LLD file, the Bureau predicts, will be found inaccurate when compared with information from the other data bases, necessitating further corrections.

                [298 U.S.App.D.C. 128] represented on a computer screen as a matrix of letters and numbers.   The Bureau anticipates that its selection of data elements may change before the LLD file is integrated into the ALMRS system.   By February 1990, the Bureau had completed data collection for the LLD file for fourteen states, including all the states specified in Petroleum Information's FOIA request
                

Along with the existing CRS and MCRS files, two other new data bases will be merged with the LLD file to form the ALMRS: the Status file will contain information about the availability of land for different uses, and the Geographic Coordination Data Base (GCDB) will graphically relate ownership and survey information to physical points on the Earth's surface. The increased accuracy of the information in the ALMRS compared to prior records, the Bureau expects, will "result in an adjustment of previously incorrect property rights." Brief for Appellant at 7. The Bureau intends to certify the ALMRS as an official record so that it may be used as evidence in litigation.

By contracts effective between 1986 and 1989, the Bureau hired Petroleum Information--a compiler and seller of oil and gas exploration information--to assist in the collection of data for the Status file for eight states. As provided by the contracts, the Bureau gave Petroleum Information access to magnetic computer tapes containing the LLD files for those states; this access was given solely to facilitate the company's collection and entry of information for the Status file. Petroleum Information agreed to return the LLD files upon completion of the work, and promised not to disseminate the files to anyone except as provided in the contracts. The contracts apparently did not bar Petroleum Information from, as said in Brief for Appellant at 31, "do[ing] through the FOIA what the contract prohibits."

In March 1989, Petroleum Information submitted a FOIA request asking the Bureau to release a magnetic computer tape containing part of the LLD file for Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The request sought production of nine of the 17 LLD data elements. Petroleum Information acknowledges that, in common with the general public, it has access to the source documents on which the LLD file is based and that it intends, through computer services, to make data on the LLD tape immediately available to its customers.

The Bureau denied Petroleum Information's FOIA request on the ground that the LLD file is protected by the deliberative process privilege contained in Exemption 5. 2 After waiting more than five months for a response to its administrative appeal, Petroleum Information filed this action.

On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court held that the LLD file was not shielded by Exemption 5; the court found the information in the data bank "purely factual" and "neither predecisional nor deliberative." Petroleum Information Corp. v. Department of Interior, No. 89-3173, slip op. at 5 (D.D.C. Dec. 20, 1990). The district judge stressed the file's lack of "policy or opinion content." Id. at 6. The judge did not see in BLM's categorization, verification, and error-correction work any close resemblance to "the 'give-and-take' of ideas among employees that characterizes the deliberative process Exemption 5 seeks to preserve." Id. at 7 (citation omitted). Accordingly, she entered judgment for Petroleum Information.

II. ANALYSIS
A. Standard of Review

Summary judgment is in order where, viewing the record in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, the court finds that there remains no "genuine issue as to any material fact." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c); see Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 157, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 1608, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970). This circuit applies in FOIA cases the same standard of appellate review applicable generally to summary judgments. See, e.g., Washington Post Co. v. Department of Health and Human Servs., 865 F.2d 320, 325-26 & n. 8 (D.C.Cir.1989). 3 In performing that review, however, we are mindful that the "burden is on the agency" to show that requested material falls within a FOIA exemption. 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B); see Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 254, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2513, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986) (holding that "in ruling on a motion for summary judgment, the judge must view the evidence presented through the prism of the substantive evidentiary burden"). When an agency seeks to protect material...

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