The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (MCL 15.231 et seq.); King v. Michigan State Police Dep’t; Whether the defendant-city complied with MCL 15.235(2); “Grant” of a FOIA request; Statutory interpretation; Use of a dictionary to define undefined terms; Cain v. Waste Mgmt., Inc. (After Remand); Principle that the Legislature’s use of two different terms suggests they have different meanings; United States Fid. Ins. & Guar. Co. v. Michigan Catastrophic Claims Ass’n (On Rehearing); Distinction under the federal FOIA between granting a request & fulfilling it; National Sec. Archive v. CIA (D DC); Avoiding a construction rendering parts of the statute nugatory; American Fed’n of State Cnty. & Mun. Employees v. City of Detroit; Niles Twp. v. Berrien Cnty. Bd. of Comm’rs; MCL 15.234; Requirement that a public body provide a “good faith” time estimate; MCL 15.234(8); MCL 15.240(1)(b); MCL 15.240(7); Attorney fees, costs, & disbursements under the FOIA; MCL 15.240(6); Amberg v. City of Dearborn; Thomas v. City of New Baltimore; Walloon Lake Water Sys., Inc. v. Melrose Twp.; Scharret v. City of Berkley

The trial court erred in holding that the defendant-city failed to comply with MCL 15.235(2), and in determining that defendant’s responses to plaintiff’s FOIA requests were effectively denials of those requests because the requested documents were not produced in the time periods provided for a response. Thus, the court reversed the trial court’s grant of summary disposition for plaintiff and remanded for issuance of an order granting defendant summary disposition pursuant to MCR 2.116(I)(2). It also vacated the award of attorney fees, costs, and disbursements to plaintiff, and declined to award appellate attorney fees, costs, or disbursements in her cross-appeal. Plaintiff claimed that the failure to provide information pertaining to defendant’s reserve police department unit by the requested date was a wrongful denial of her requests. Defendant argued that it did not violate the FOIA in sending letters granting her requests and producing the requested documents a short time later, and thus the trial court erred in granting summary disposition to plaintiff. The court agreed. “The trial court interpreted MCL 15.235(2), as does plaintiff, to mean that a public body can only ‘grant’ a request by delivering the requested documents within the time period specified by the statute for a response.” The court disagreed. Plaintiff and the trial court suggested that unless the term grant was interpreted to require immediate fulfillment, public bodies could grant requests but never actually fulfill them. However, the court noted that its holding did not give public bodies “carte blanche not to produce responsive documents.” Nothing prohibits “a plaintiff, if faced with an inordinate delay in the production of requested documents, from filing suit on the ground that a public body’s actions in response to a FOIA request effectively constitute a denial in whole or part, notwithstanding that body’s labelling of a response as a ‘grant’ of the request.” FOIA permits a trial court to “award punitive damages for arbitrary and capricious ‘refusal or delay in disclosing’ public records.” Public bodies are required to provide a good-faith time estimate, and “failure to meet an estimate (although it is non-binding) may in some circumstances tend to show that a public body’s response was effectively a denial notwithstanding its choice of labels.”