New York City Loses Bid to Withhold Jail Records
On June 26, 2024, New York City’s constructive denial of records from its Department of Correction (DOC) was vacated by a state court. Calling that a violation of the state Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), the Supreme Court of New York for New York County ordered the DOC to produce the requested materials. Because petitioner was an attorney, it also held that the DOC was liable for attorney’s fees.
On July 12, 2023, petitioner Cyrus Joubin, from his eponymous law office, requested DOC’s rules, procedures and policies in effect on October 10, 2017, regarding guards’ responsibilities “to protect inmates from assaults by other inmates” and “to supervise and monitor DOC housing units to prevent violence by inmates against other inmates.” The request further sought policies for conducting investigations into such assaults and violence, as well as investigations into trip-and-fall accidents. It was further refined to include both the Brooklyn Detention Center (BDC) and the Rikers Island jail complex. Identities of guards and other employees on duty that day and their duty rosters were also requested.
When the DOC Records Access Officer (RAO) denied the requests, Joubin then turned to the Records Access Appeals Office (RAAO). But he received no decision on his administrative appeal within the applicable time limit. Joubin then petitioned for review.
The state supreme court began by observing that DOC had 10 business days to respond to Joubin’s administrative appeal under the law, and since he received no response, his FOIL requests were deemed constructively denied.
Turning then to the requests themselves, the court disagreed with the RAO that the requested records were not “reasonably described.” To the contrary, the requests did “not require the DOC to produce each and every policy document governing all of the training, duties, obligations, and conduct of the officers and employees”; rather the request was “limited to policy documents that particularly address the manner in which DOC officers and employees are obligated to prevent, respond to, and investigate inmate-on-inmate violence, and to investigate slip-and-fall accidents.”
In support of this determination, the court pointed to Matter of Partnership for the Homeless v. New York City Dep’t of Educ., 2019 NY Misc. LEXIS 5813 (N.Y. Sup. N.Y. Cty.), which refused to affirm denial of a FOIL request by officials who “offered no evidence to establish that the descriptions provided are insufficient for purposes of extracting or retrieving the requested document from the virtual files.”
The RAO had also acquiesced to the DOC’s objection to producing records of policies not “currently in effect,” but the court found that was error, too. The court agreed with the RAO’s determination that requests for the identities of employees were interrogatories and not requests for specific records; denial was appropriate because FOIL does not “require any entity to prepare any record not possessed or maintained by such entity.” But the duty rosters were not properly withheld, the court said, brushing aside the DOC’s objections to releasing sensitive personnel information because that could be redacted from copies provided to Joubin.
Joubin was also deemed eligible to recover attorney’s fees because he was an attorney representing himself. He was therefore directed to submit an affidavit setting forth the specifics of the time he expended in prosecuting the proceeding. See: Matter of Law Off. of Cyrus Joubin v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Corr., 2024 NY Slip Op 32165(U) (Sup. Ct.).
Related legal case
Matter of Law Off. of Cyrus Joubin v. N.Y.C. Dep’t of Corr.
| Year | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 2024 NY Slip Op 32165(U) (Sup. Ct.) |
| Level | State Trial Court |
| Conclusion | Bench Verdict |