Court Upholds Village's Response to FOIA Request from Recurrent Requester
In Dyler v. Village of Arlington Heights, an Illinois Appellate Court ruled in favor of a Village in five consolidated lawsuits challenging the Village's response to multiple FOIA requests.
A requester filed various FOIA requests asking the Village to provide copies of bonds for specific Village employees. The Village responded to each request that it searched for responsive records, but did not locate any. About a year later, the Village did locate a requested bond from its insurer and sent it to the requester. The requester subsequently filed five separate lawsuits against the Village, all claiming that the Village violated FOIA. The requester also filed appeals with the Illinois Attorney General's Public Access Counselor (PAC), which ruled in favor of the Village, finding that it properly responded to the request because no responsive records existed.
The trial court consolidated all five lawsuits and ruled in favor of the Village, finding that it properly responded to the requester's FOIA requests. That decision was appealed to the Appellate Court, which also ruled in the Village's favor, finding support for the Village's response in an affidavit submitted by the Village that no records existed. The Appellate Court also rejected the requester's claim that the Village improperly designated him a "recurrent requester" under FOIA. The Court noted that FOIA authorizes a public body additional time to respond to FOIA requests from a "recurrent requester" (21 business days rather than 5 business days), and that his multiple requests to the Village were properly counted for purposes of determining that he was a recurrent requester.
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