Media Team Settles Long-Running FOIA Lawsuit
Holland & Knight's Media Law Team has recovered six figures in legal fees for several major Florida newspapers after prevailing in a long-running Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
The lawsuit followed congressional inquiries, grand jury probes, and a Department of Homeland Security investigation involving the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its handling of the four hurricanes that battered the Sunshine State in 2004. The investigations revealed mismanagement at FEMA and fraud in many citizens' claims for aid. More than a dozen people were indicted.
The Florida newspapers owned by publishing giant Gannett Co., Inc., submitted a FOIA request for the addresses of all 600,000 FEMA aid and flood-insurance recipients in Florida to track patterns in disbursements and further assess the agency's performance. FEMA, citing privacy concerns, refused to release the records.
On appeal, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously concluded that the public was indeed entitled to access the records as the court could not "find any privacy interests here that even begin to outweigh this public interest." The records were released, and FEMA settled the newspaper's petition for legal fees for $105,000.