The Appellate Division issued an opinion today, Shipyard Associates v. Hoboken, which upheld the denial of an OPRA request as overly broad. Although the opinion is not precedential, it provides a helpful summary of how to analyze the often difficult question of whether a request asks for specific records or instead is an invalid demand for research.

In Shipyard, the requestor submitted three requests, all seeking information about certain ordinances. The court said that the first request, which asked for “any and all” documents concerning the ordinances, was invalid as a blanket request. The court determined that another request, for “all documents in the…office’s files concerning [the ordinances],” was deficient for the same reason.

The third request sought:

Copies of all correspondence (including e-mails), transcripts, reports, memos, notes, minutes   prepared by and received by Hoboken employees, Hoboken’s agents, members of Hoboken City Council concerning [the ordinances].

The court viewed this request as being narrower than the others, but still not specific enough. It concluded that the request was invalid because it didn’t identify any Hoboken employees or agents with regard to correspondence, and contained no identifiers other than generic terms such as “reports” and “notes.” The court characterized this request as an open-ended demand which improperly required the custodian to search through all files and analyze them in order to identify the relevant records.

As noted above, the opinion is not precedential, so the court’s specific rulings with regard to the three requests are not binding in other cases. The value of this opinion for public bodies is that it contains a cogent description of the law governing what constitutes an invalid OPRA request. The court succinctly summarized the key cases on overly-broad requests and clearly explained the reasoning in each case. This summary will be a useful resource for custodians, particularly because requestors constantly submit extremely broad requests.

There is one troubling aspect of the court’s opinion: it remanded the requestor’s common law claim for consideration, because the trial judge had not addressed it. The Appellate Division stated, without explanation, that a request that is overly broad under OPRA may still present a common law claim for disclosure of the records. I think this is incorrect. If a request fails to identify the records sought, it necessarily follows that the common law balancing test–which requires an analysis of the specific records requested– cannot be performed.