The Appellate Division issued an unpublished opinion last week, Feld v. City of Orange, that contains two reminders of basic legal principles governing attorney fee awards in OPRA cases:

(1) Attorney fee awards to prevailing requestors are mandatory. For reasons not explained in the opinion, the trial court in this case denied an attorney fee award, even though it ordered that a number of records be released to the requestor. The Appellate Division reaffirmed the clearly settled rule that OPRA makes fee awards mandatory, not discretionary, when a requestor’s litigation causes disclosure of records.

(2) An attorney who represents himself, in any type of case, is not entitled to an attorney fee award. As a result, the requestor here, an attorney who represented himself, was not eligible for OPRA’s attorney fee award.