Tokar v. DOJ, No. 16-2410, 2019 WL 6910142 (D.D.C. Dec. 19, 2019) (Contreras, J.)

Tokar v. DOJ, No. 16-2410, 2019 WL 6910142 (D.D.C. Dec. 19, 2019) (Contreras, J.)

Re:  Request for records concerning Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA") "'corporate compliance monitors'"

Disposition:  Granting in part and denying in part defendant's motion for summary judgment; denying plaintiff's motion for summary judgment

• Exemptions 6 & 7(C):  Regarding third party names, first, "the Court finds, and [plaintiff] does not dispute, that the documents were 'compiled for law enforcement purposes' in the required sense."  "DOJ obtained and compiled these documents as part of its FCPA investigations into the fifteen companies."  "As to the privacy interest:  it is settled that individuals have a substantial interest in not being revealed as subjects of criminal investigations."  Responding to plaintiff's objection "that the privacy interests of the individual clients cannot really be so substantial, because at least some of the clients' names appear to have been redacted from things like the candidates' curricula vitae and publicly-available website biographies," the court finds that "the clients may have consented to only limited kinds of disclosure, and it is not clear that all of these CVs and biographies were intended to be (or were in fact) widely shared or published."  "And even then, past disclosure does not necessarily defeat an interest against further, potentially broader disclosure now."  However, "[b]ecause there is doubt about the nature of the privacy interests at stake, the Court directs DOJ to, within 60 days, (1) contact the relevant monitor candidates and inquire whether the candidates have their clients’ consent to publicly disclose (and/or have previously publicly disclosed) the existence of those representations and (2) conduct its own inquiry into whether the existence of those representations is already in the public domain."
  
  Regarding DOJ attorney names, based on the information provided, "the Court cannot grant summary judgment to either party."  "But given that DOJ has already been willing to release the names of the DOJ line attorneys involved in the relevant proceedings, the parties should be able to resolve this issue through further negotiations and, if necessary, production."