Tag Archives: statute of limitations

New Appellate Division Opinion Addresses An Important Issue Regarding the Statute of Limitations for OPRA Actions

In Dalnoky v. Pinelands Reg. School Dist., the court dealt with an OPRA issue of first impression: whether a requestor may refile his OPRA request, after the custodian denied the request and the requestor did not file a court complaint challenging this denial within the 45-day statute of limitations. The Appellate Division concluded that a requestor may not avoid the statute of limitations by filing the same OPRA request at a later date.

In this case, the custodian denied the OPRA request on October 23, 2020. The requestor subsequently filed the same OPRA request several other times during 2021 and 2022. He filed a lawsuit against the school district on December 6, 2021, which raised several claims, including a challenge to the denial of his OPRA requests.

The Appellate Division upheld the dismissal of the OPRA claim, for failure to file it with the trial court until well beyond the 45-day statute of limitations applicable to OPRA matters: the custodian denied the request in October 2020, and the complaint was filed in December 2021.

The requestor argued that the complaint was timely because it concerned the OPRA request he had made to the district in November 2021. But the court determined that this request was the same as the one that the district had denied in October 2020, which the requestor had not timely challenged. The court observed that it would “frustrate the purpose” of OPRA’s statute of limitations to “allow plaintiff to start a new forty-five-day period by simply making an identical request….”

I think the court’s determination is inarguably correct; indeed, there would effectively be no statute of limitations for OPRA complaints if appellant’s argument were accepted. However, there’s at least one trial court ruling that reached the opposite conclusion.

It’s unfortunate the Appellate Division’s opinion in Dalnoky is not precedential, to preclude other requestors from refiling their requests in an effort to avoid compliance with the statute of limitations for OPRA complaints.

A Pending Appellate Division Case Presents Two Important OPRA Issues

Several municipalities are in litigation with the organization Rise Against Hate over requests for residents’ email addresses. One of these cases, involving Cherry Hill, is pending in the Appellate Division. Cherry Hill appealed the trial court’s ruling that OPRA’s privacy section does not protect email addresses from disclosure.

There is no precedential case law on whether email addresses must be disclosed under OPRA. I think there’s a strong argument that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their email addresses, and therefore this information should typically not be obtainable through an OPRA request. However, I’m not confident the court will agree with this position, in view of the extremely limited effect the Supreme Court and the Appellate Division have given to OPRA’s privacy provision in recent cases.

The Cherry Hill appeal presents another important issue, which I’ve never seen raised before: whether a requestor is permitted to refile its OPRA request, after the custodian denied the request and the requestor did not file a court challenge to the denial within the 45-day statute of limitations. The trial judge concluded that a requestor may submit the same request again, despite the failure to meet the statute of limitations, on the ground that OPRA does not prohibit requestors from refiling their requests.

This determination is plainly incorrect. It misses the point that the Supreme Court expressly held that OPRA has a 45-day statute of limitations for requestors who want to challenge a denial in the Law Division. Mason v. City of Hoboken. The trial court’s decision makes the Supreme Court’s decision meaningless, by allowing requestors who fail to meet the complaint filing deadline to simply file the same request again. The result is that there is no statute of limitations–precisely the opposite of what the Supreme Court mandated.