Sharpe v. U.S. Fed. Highway Admin., No. 24-0045, 2024 WL 2064051 (E.D. Wash. May 8, 2024) (Rice, J.)

Sharpe v. U.S. Fed. Highway Admin., No. 24-0045, 2024 WL 2064051 (E.D. Wash. May 8, 2024) (Rice, J.)

Re:  Request for communications exchanged between two employees over a two-year period

Disposition:  Plaintiff’s motion to dismiss is granted

• Procedural Requirements, Proper FOIA Requests:  “The Court finds that Plaintiff’s email is impermissibly vague, and therefore does not constitute a proper FOIA request.”  “Plaintiff asserts that he is not seeking all documents concerning a particular subject, but therein lies the problem.”  “His FOIA request is flawed because it lacks any limiting subject matter and cannot be said to ‘reasonably describe’ the information sought.”  “Plaintiff insists that his request is focused in nature, because he narrowed the scope of the search to emails and Microsoft Teams messages exchanged between two employees within [a] nearly two-year period.”  “However, it still unclear what general subject matter Plaintiff hopes to uncover from this request, and Defendant informed him that as stated, his request does not particularize the search as 55,000 employees utilize the ‘dot.gov’ domain.”  “Plaintiff could have solved this problem by providing [defendant] with a general idea of what he was searching for and was invited to do so.”  “To place a finer point, the request is not unduly burdensome because it will require a detailed search of the records, but because it creates a burden on Defendant to comb through documents that may not ultimately be responsive to whatever Plaintiff's desired research point may be.”  “FOIA was not designed to provide the requester with an ‘all-encompassing fishing expedition of files in every office within an agency.’”  “While Plaintiff’s request cannot be characterized as searching for ‘every file within an agency’ as he has limited the individuals and timeframe regarding the records he is seeking, his request is still incredibly broad, and he provides no narrowing agent with which Defendant can use to conduct a search.”  “This is not to suggest that Plaintiff must express exactly what he is looking for, but providing the agency with the ability to focus the scope in order to produce a more fruitful search would be a proper FOIA request.”