Treez, Inc. v. United States Department of Homeland Security

Background

In a separate order, the court granted plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and denied defendants’ cross-motion. This order addressed two issues arising from the magistrate judge’s handling of disputes over the administrative record: whether defendants should face contempt proceedings and whether monetary sanctions could be imposed.

The magistrate judge had found that the government repeatedly failed, without adequate justification, to comply with orders requiring it to search for and produce documents for the administrative record. Defendants did not file a response specifically addressing the recommendation for an order of contempt. Instead, they asked to stay the part of the magistrate judge’s order requiring further supplementation of the record.

Contempt Show-Cause Order

The court explained that a magistrate judge may investigate whether contempt proceedings are warranted and certify the relevant facts to a district judge. The district judge then decides whether the conduct warrants punishment; the magistrate judge does not itself issue the contempt order.

The court adopted the magistrate judge’s findings that defendants repeatedly failed to comply with court orders without justification. But the recommended remedy was coercive civil contempt, which requires a condition allowing the accused party to end the sanction by complying with the court’s order. Here, that condition would have required defendants to provide further supplementation of the administrative record. Because the court had granted summary judgment for plaintiffs, the question of further supplementation was moot. The court therefore discharged the order to show cause and relieved defendants of the obligation to locate and submit additional administrative-record documents.

The court stated that this relief did not approve defendants’ unilateral delay in complying with the magistrate judge’s orders.

Monetary Sanctions

Plaintiffs challenged the magistrate judge’s conclusion that monetary sanctions might not be available against the government when the parties dispute the contents of an administrative record in an Administrative Procedure Act case. The magistrate judge had questioned whether sanctions under Rule 37 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were available, particularly because an earlier referral order described the dispute over supplementing the record as not being a discovery matter “per se.”

The court held that this description should not be understood as deciding that the government is immune from sanctions under Rule 37 or under the court’s inherent authority to control its proceedings. The fact that defendants were relieved from further supplementing the record also did not excuse their earlier failures to comply with court orders or automatically prevent sanctions for those failures.

The court referred plaintiffs’ request for monetary sanctions back to the magistrate judge to reconsider whether sanctions were warranted and, if so, in what amount. The magistrate judge could request additional briefing but was not required to do so. The court did not itself award or deny monetary sanctions.