Jones v. South Carolina Department of Corrections, No. 09-7309 (Fourth Circuit, March 25, 2010).
First things first: this is an "unpublished" decision, meaning that it is not binding precedent in the Fourth Circuit. However, the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure are clear that, even though it's only persuasive, not precedential, you can still cite it all you want as long as the court gets a copy. So the panel can't bury it in the Federal Appendix, never to return.
Of course, the principle you'd cite this case for is the obvious, "appeal within the proper time limits or lose it." You get 30 days from the district court decision. This particular pro se prisoner filing a civil rights suit waited two months, filing on June 1 for an April 1 decision.
And, even though he claims he didn't know about the district court's ruling until a month and a half after it happened (May 15), he overshot the fourteen day window (REMEMBER - if time limits exceed eleven days, weekends count!) to file for a re-opening of the case by three days, and just filed a plain vanilla appeal.
As such, the Fourth Circuit didn't want to bother.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Welcome, and How Even Confidential Information Can Be Boring
Welcome to the DC Federal Civil Appeals Blog, where I will provide summaries and analysis of selected decisions in civil cases from the DC Circuit and the Fourth Circuit.
Our first case on the roster was chosen because it's the only DC Circuit decision this week; it's the (not) exciting United Technologies Corp. v. Dep't of Defense, No. 08-5435.
Circuit Judge Henderson drafts the unanimous opinion (Judges Rogers and Brown were also on the panel, making it an all-gal panel in an otherwise manly-seeming case), spending ten of the thirteen pages of the decision telling you what I will say in the next paragraph:
United Technologies makes helicopter and aircraft parts which the DoD buys. United Technologies' home base is in Connecticut, and some nosy local reporters submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the Defense Contract Management Agency to see what misdeeds the DCMA had caught UTC subsidiaries doing. The DCMA, after some discussion, agreed to send out the "corrective action reports" with redactions, and United Technologies sued.
Yes, evidently you can sue to keep the federal government from revealing information about you that you think is covered by an exemption. In this case, it was 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(4), the trade secrets exemption. United Technologies argued that the exemption was there to protect the business of those who dealt with the government, and to encourage businesses to give information to the government.
The DC Circuit didn't get to the second argument, which I think is pretty silly: as the IRS tells you every year, just because bad things could happen if you disclose your information doesn't get you out of a mandatory disclosure. Regardless, the DC Circuit found that the district court hadn't explained why, despite all the evidence from United Technologies that this information was sensitive trade secrets, they should be disclosed anyway. So the DC Circuit kicked it back to the district court to come up with an explanation.
By the way, the Connecticut media asked for these documents in 2004. The story's probably pretty stale now.
Our first case on the roster was chosen because it's the only DC Circuit decision this week; it's the (not) exciting United Technologies Corp. v. Dep't of Defense, No. 08-5435.
Circuit Judge Henderson drafts the unanimous opinion (Judges Rogers and Brown were also on the panel, making it an all-gal panel in an otherwise manly-seeming case), spending ten of the thirteen pages of the decision telling you what I will say in the next paragraph:
United Technologies makes helicopter and aircraft parts which the DoD buys. United Technologies' home base is in Connecticut, and some nosy local reporters submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the Defense Contract Management Agency to see what misdeeds the DCMA had caught UTC subsidiaries doing. The DCMA, after some discussion, agreed to send out the "corrective action reports" with redactions, and United Technologies sued.
Yes, evidently you can sue to keep the federal government from revealing information about you that you think is covered by an exemption. In this case, it was 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(4), the trade secrets exemption. United Technologies argued that the exemption was there to protect the business of those who dealt with the government, and to encourage businesses to give information to the government.
The DC Circuit didn't get to the second argument, which I think is pretty silly: as the IRS tells you every year, just because bad things could happen if you disclose your information doesn't get you out of a mandatory disclosure. Regardless, the DC Circuit found that the district court hadn't explained why, despite all the evidence from United Technologies that this information was sensitive trade secrets, they should be disclosed anyway. So the DC Circuit kicked it back to the district court to come up with an explanation.
By the way, the Connecticut media asked for these documents in 2004. The story's probably pretty stale now.
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