Action under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) & the Open Meetings Act (OMA); Formal denial of a FOIA request; MCL 15.235(5)(b); Hartzell v Mayville Cmty Sch Dist

The court held that the trial court did not err by granting defendant-township summary disposition as to the individual plaintiff’s (Jaye) FOIA requests, or by rejecting plaintiffs’ OMA claim. Jaye submitted a FOIA request to defendant seeking several documents. Plaintiff-citizens group (Triple Dippers) later filed a legal action claiming violations of the FOIA and the OMA, seeking declaratory relief. On appeal, the court rejected Jaye’s argument that defendant violated the FOIA by not responding to two of his FOIA requests with a denial and certification that the records did not exist. It noted that defendant did not ignore the “FOIA request; rather, it provided the records that it considered responsive. Hartzell does not support the claim that a public body violates FOIA simply by supplying records, instead of certifying that the requested records do not exist, based on the requester’s (1) disagreement with the public body’s determination of the records’ responsiveness and (2) claim that the records do not exist.” As to Jaye’s OMA claim, he contended that the minutes from the meeting at issue “inadequately reflected the board’s decisions regarding the ratification of attorney retainer agreements. This new argument is entirely different from the original OMA claim in Jaye’s amended complaint, which focused on [defendant’s] procedures for approving bill payments and the board meetings that took place” previously. Affirmed.