Teig v. Chavez

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Robert Teig, Appellant, v. Vanessa Chavez, Alissa Van Sloten, Patricia G. Kropf, Elizabeth Jacobi, Brad Hart, and Teresa Feldmann, Appellees.

No. 23-0833

Supreme Court of Iowa

June 7, 2024

Submitted February 20, 2024

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Linn County, Lars G Anderson, Judge.

Private citizen appeals summary judgment granted to city officials on his claims for violations of the Iowa Open Records Act. Affirmed in Part, Reversed in Part, and Remanded.

Oxley J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which all justices joined. Robert Teig (argued), Cedar Rapids, pro se.

Andrew T. Tice (argued) and Kristine R. Stone of Ahlers &amp Cooney, P.C., Des Moines, for appellees.

Cathy S. Trent-Vilim of Lamson Dugan & Murray LLP, Omaha, Nebraska, and Jason Palmer and Ryan Tunink of Lamson Dugan & Murray LLP, West Des Moines, for amicus curiae Iowa League of Cities.

Thomas Story and Rita Bettis Austen of ACLU of Iowa, Des Moines, for amici curiae Iowa Freedom of Information Council and American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Iowa, Inc. Oxley, Justice.

Iowa's Open Records Act (the Act) prioritizes "free and open examination of public records." Iowa Code § 22.8(3) (2021). It creates a presumption that the public has a right to access public records, guaranteeing some level of transparency and accountability in the work of state and local governments. However, transparency is not absolute. In this case, we consider the extent of certain limitations the general assembly has placed on open records requests in the context of hiring government employees.

In 2021, the City of Cedar Rapids (the City) hired a new city clerk and city attorney. Plaintiff Robert Teig took an interest in the City's hiring processes and submitted open records requests for job applications and several other documents. The City refused to fulfill many of Teig's requests, claiming the attorney-client privilege and the Act's confidentiality provisions exempted several documents from disclosure. Teig filed suit, seeking production of the requested documents, statutory damages, and declaratory and injunctive relief. The district court granted the City's motion for summary judgment.

On appeal, Teig raises five arguments: (1) job applications submitted to governmental bodies are not confidential under chapter 22, (2) municipalities cannot claim attorney-client privilege in the context of an open records request, (3) search and retrieval fees are not authorized by chapter 22 (4) defendants unreasonably delayed fulfilling certain requests, and (5) the district court should have granted him leave to submit additional interrogatories in the ensuing litigation.

We conclude that the district court correctly found that documents subject to the attorney-client privilege are protected from disclosure under chapter 22 and that chapter 22 authorizes municipalities or governmental bodies to charge search and retrieval fees. While job applications are generally protected from disclosure, that protection extends only to persons "outside of government." Id. § 22.7(18). Thus, the City was obligated to disclose those applications submitted by current employees of the City, although it properly withheld external applications. The district court failed to address Teig's claims of undue delay related to billing records on the basis that the request was mooted when Teig later received them. That a document is eventually received from another source does not necessarily moot a claim of unreasonable delay. For the reasons explained below, we affirm in part and reverse in part the district court's grant of summary judgment and remand for further proceedings. We also affirm the district court's denial of Teig's motion to submit additional discovery.

I. Factual Background.

The City hired longtime employee Alissa Van Sloten as its new city clerk in May 2021. After Van Sloten was hired, City Attorney Jim Flitz wrote a letter expressing his legal opinion that job applications were confidential under Iowa's Open Records Act. That summer, Flitz retired, and the City advertised the city attorney vacancy through a third-party consultant, Novak Consulting Group. Elizabeth Jacobi and Vanessa Chavez submitted applications. At the time they applied, Jacobi was employed by the City as an assistant city attorney, and Chavez was serving as city attorney for Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Some city attorney candidates requested that their applications not be made public. The city council solicited a legal opinion from outside counsel as to whether it could review applications in a closed session. After receiving assurance that the process was allowed, the city council entered a closed session on October 12, 2021, to review applications. Chavez was ultimately hired, and Jacobi stayed on as assistant city attorney.

After learning about this closed session, Robert Teig requested several documents related to the City's hiring process for both the city clerk and city attorney positions. Over several months, he submitted requests to Van Sloten, Chavez, Jacobi, and the other defendants in this case: Cedar Rapids Mayor Brad Hart, Human Resources Director Teresa Feldmann, and Assistant City Attorney Patricia Kropf.

First, Teig requested Van Sloten's job application for the city clerk position. Kropf informed him that the record was confidential. He then requested city attorney applications, Novak's job posting for the city attorney position, applicant "requests to close the interviews," and the legal opinion that precipitated the October 12 closed session. Feldmann asserted attorney-client privilege over the legal opinion, but indicated she would work on producing the other records. She also told Teig that, under City policy, he would be charged $20 per hour for searches exceeding thirty minutes. On November 23, the city council held another closed session to discuss Teig's request for job applications and the possibility that Teig might file a lawsuit under the Act to seek access to withheld documents.

Having not yet received these documents, Teig filed this suit the following day on November 24 in Linn County District Court.

On December 14, Mayor Hart sent Teig the job posting. Hart also reasserted the City's claims of confidentiality over the job applications and privilege over the legal opinion, and he informed Teig there were no responsive documents related to requests for closed interviews. However, Chavez later provided Teig with redacted copies of requests by applicants for the city attorney position that the City review their applications in a closed session.

Teig made additional requests after filing this suit. On December 6, Teig sought information about the November 23 closed session, requesting "the name of the litigation, name of any attorney involved, and bills and expenditures related to the matter." Jacobi, then serving as acting city attorney, sent Teig minutes from the open portion of the November 23 session. However, she claimed there were no documents related to litigation or billing, and the City would review relevant documents it received for privileged information. Teig received redacted billing documents directly from the City's outside counsel as part of discovery related to this litigation on March 10, 2022, in a file labeled: "FINAL APPROVED BILLINGS TO SEND TO TEIG APPROVED BY CITY."

Shortly after the December 6 request, Chavez took over as city attorney and asked Teig to direct all future document requests through her office in light of his litigation against City officials. She sent instructions on this procedure to City employees as well. Teig resisted this arrangement and, on March 11, requested a copy of the instructions. Chavez forwarded them to Teig on March 18. Teig filed an amended petition on March 19, 2022, which included claims related to the November 23 closed session and Chavez's instructions that all requests go through her.

On October 14, 2022, the defendants filed a motion for summary judgment. They argued that the employment applications were confidential and that the legal opinion regarding the closed-session review of applications was protected by attorney-client privilege. They also defended the City's search and retrieval fees and rejected Teig's claims that any disclosures were untimely.

Rather than formally resisting summary judgment, Teig filed a motion to compel and for sanctions against Chavez, seeking to force additional discovery. He also sought to serve additional discovery requests on Van Sloten, Feldmann, Jacobi, and Kropf, and to correct a previous interrogatory sent to Hart. Teig claimed he mistakenly sent requests to the wrong defendants, and this war- ranted exceeding the thirty interrogatories allowed under Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 1.509(1)(e). The district court denied Teig's request for additional discovery on March 7, finding he had not shown good cause.

The district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment on May 18, 2023. The court found that all employment applications were confidential and that the legal opinion was privileged. It also upheld the City's search and retrieval fee policy and rejected all claims of refusal and unreasonable delay. Teig appealed, and we retained the appeal.

II. Analysis.

A. Interrogatories.

We start by disposing of Teig's claim that the district court erred in its discovery ruling by counting subparts of his interrogatories toward the total number allowed. A district court's evidentiary rulings are reviewed for abuse of discretion. State v. Helmers, 753 N.W.2d 565, 567 (Iowa 2008). Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 1.509(1)(e) limits interrogatories in civil litigation to thirty. The district court concluded that the defendants "arguably...