Appealing production of document images, when original documents exist
Asked by Edward Vielmetti on February 17, 2014.
3 answers from Edward Vielmetti, Shawn Musgrave and Ryan Carboni.
I’m trying to figure out how to appeal a FOIA request where the documents that were provided were all document images (bitmaps) with the word DRAFT overprinted, and where the resulting text was not searchable.
I believe that originals must exist that would let me search through the text, rather than tediously go through each page by hand. I’m not sure that I have standing to appeal. (I’m in Michigan, if that matters; the relevant case law is Zeeff v City of Ann Arbor which addresses the question of electronic records vs paper records, but doesn’t tackle this question head on.)
thanks
Ed