H.G. Fuller v. Doe is an anonymous speech case involving an attempt by global adhesives company H.G. Fuller to discover the identity of an anonymous speaker on an online financial message board.
H.G. Fuller v. Doe is an anonymous speech case involving an attempt by global adhesives company H.G. Fuller to discover the identity of an anonymous speaker on an online financial message board.
The Sixth District Court of Appeal in California has granted Cyberlaw Clinic client John Doe's motion to unseal records in H.B. Fuller v. Doe. In the trial court, Doe and Fuller stipulated to sealing documents Fuller claimed contained confidential information. On appeal, we moved to unseal the records in the appellate court because they do not contain confidential information.
Some of the documents in Fuller v. Doe are sealed. You can download the redacted versions of these documents, however.
According to National Journal's Technology Daily:
The House Oversight and Government Reform Information Policy Subcommittee on Tuesday approved legislation that aims to speed the government's response to Freedom of Information Act requests. CongressDaily reports that the legislation would uphold an existing requirement that government agencies respond to information requests within 20 days but would apply pressure to that deadline by imposing consequences on federal agencies for missing it. The bill also would mandate that agencies provide information requesters with a tracking number to follow the progress of their request either by phone or on the Internet. "Requesters are being forced to wait much longer than necessary for responses from agency FOIA offices," said bill co-sponsor and Missouri Democrat William Lacy Clay.
One of the big problems the journalist in Poulsen v. USCBP had was that the agency never gave him a tracking number and then claimed they lost his FOIA request. Hopefully this could solve that problem.
We Filed our Motion for attorney's fees in the Poulsen FOIA case. FOIA includes a fee-shifting provision to encourage people to litigate to defend their rights-- when the government loses, it has to pay the other side's costs if they "substantially prevailed" and meet the test that they are entitled to fees. We're asking for ~$70,000 dollars to cover our litigation costs and attorneys fees and believe we should get all of it given the government's obdurate behavior in the case.