The Appellate Division recently issued an opinion concerning an OPRA attorney fee award. Mills v. State of New Jersey. This unpublished opinion, while not precedential, is interesting for two reasons.

First, the court substantially reduced the requested fee award due to the plaintiff’s limited success in his OPRA suit. The requestor sought hundreds of documents, plus other records, but only obtained a single, 2-page document. According to the court, such minimal “qualitative” success, in an OPRA case that did not involve complex issues, justified reducing requestor’s attorney fee award by over 80%, to only $2376.

Second, and perhaps of more importance, the court rejected the requestor’s claim that he was entitled to fees for successfully obtaining some additional documents under the common law. As I’ve previously noted (see this post), litigants often point to language in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Mason v. Hoboken as requiring attorney fee awards in common law request cases, and some judges have made such awards. But the Appellate Division here correctly rejected the argument that Mason created a right to a mandatory attorney fee award when records are obtained through common law litigation.