The Appellate Division issued a significant opinion today, Lagerkvist v. Office of the Governor.  In just 10 pages, this published opinion deals with several difficult issues that regularly confront OPRA custodians, including how to identify an invalid OPRA request and how a custodian must respond to such a request.

The request in Lagerkvist asked the Governor’s Office for all records of out-of-state travel, since 2012, by the Governor and members of his senior staff to “third-party funded events,” including records of travel arrangements, expenses, schedules, and documents showing the Governor’s or other official’s role in the event. The request also sought all emails regarding the arrangements and events.

The court held that this was an invalid research request. It explained that to satisfy the request, the custodian would have to determine which travel records correlated to the Governor and staff members; attempt to determine which of these were for events funded by third parties; and collect all relevant paper and electronic documents. The court said that doing all this “convert[s] a custodian into a researcher,” which is contrary to OPRA.

The Appellate Division also rejected the requestor’s argument that the Governor’s Office custodian did not respond properly to the invalid request. Lagerkvist complained that the denial letter incorrectly said the request was “unclear.” The court dismissed this argument as irrelevant to the question of whether the request in fact was valid. The court further noted that because the denial letter also cited case law stating that overbroad requests are invalid, the custodian appropriately explained that he was denying the request for this reason.

In addition, the court rejected the argument that the custodian violated OPRA by not replying to an email the requestor sent him in response to the denial letter, which purported to clarify the request. Lagerkvist argued that OPRA imposes a duty upon a custodian to explain “the reasons for denial of access with such specificity that the requestor can modify the inquiry in order to achieve success.” The court disagreed, saying that OPRA requires only that the custodian give a specific basis for the denial of the request, as the custodian did here. Having answered the request, the custodian had no additional duty to work with the requestor to assist him in his effort to obtain records.

This last holding is particularly useful. This is the first precedential opinion to say expressly that the custodian has no legal obligation to explain the basis for denial of the request in a way that will enable the requestor to submit a valid request. While the custodian of course has the discretion to provide such assistance to the requestor, there is no OPRA violation if he chooses not to do so.