Stonehill v. Internal Revenue Service

Opinion for the Court by Circuit Judge ROGERS.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge:

The issue in this appeal is whether an agency may withhold documents under Exemption 5 of the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5), when it did not invoke the same underlying privilege claims in an ongoing discovery dispute in a different, non-FOIA case in which those documents were withheld as irrelevant. Harry S. Stonehill, through his estate, maintains that the waiver rule requiring all FOIA exemptions to be raised at the same time in the original district court FOIA proceedings, see, e.g., Maydak v.…