Good morning,

As per your below submitted OPRA Request.

1 - "Please provide copies of all active liquor licenses held within the township" - see attached located records. The license does not indicate whether active or not and all current liquor licenses were provided.

2 - "Please provide number of unallocated liquor licenses within the town, as well as the price to acquire them" - questions are not subject to OPRA and an OPRA Request is for a specific government record kept and maintained by the township. If a request does not name specifically identifiable records or is overly broad, a custodian may deny access pursuant to the following court decisions: MAG Entertainment, LLC v. Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, 375 N.J. Super. 534 (App. Div. 2005), Bent v. Stafford Police Department, 381 N.J. Super. 30 (App. Div. 2005), New Jersey Builders Association v. New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing, 390 N.J. Super. 166 (App. Div. 2007), and Schuler v. Borough of Bloomsbury, GRC Complaint No. 2007-151 (February 2009). Requestors shall identify types of records, reasonable date ranges, parties to correspondence, subject matter, etc. A custodian is obligated to search their files to find the identifiable government records listed in the complainant’s OPRA request. “While an exact definition of an impermissibly overly broad request is abstract, courts have found requests that require a custodian to exercise his discretion, survey employees, or undertake research to determine whether a record is responsive are overly broad and not encompassed by OPRA.” CHRIS DOE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. RUTGERS, THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY, & CASEY WOODS in his Official Capacity as the OPRA Adm'r & Records Custodian of RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, Defendants-Respondents., No. A-5285-18T2, 2021 WL 100236, at *5 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. Jan. 12, 2021). Further, an OPRA applicant “must identify with reasonable clarity those documents that are desired, and a party cannot satisfy this requirement by simply requesting all of an agency's documents. OPRA does not authorize unbridled searches of an agency's property.” Bent, 381 N.J. Super. at 37; see also Renna v. Cnty. of Union, 407 N.J. Super. 230, 245 (App. Div. 2009). A custodian is not required to research their files to figure out which records, if any, might be responsive to a broad and unclear OPRA request.

Christine A. Gatti, RMC
Millburn Township Municipal Clerk
(973) 564-7073

@MillburnTwp
http://www.twp.millburn.nj.us/
Township of Millburn Facebook Page

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