TAX ANALYSTS,
Plaintiff,
v.
INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE,
Defendant.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE FIRST AMENDED COMPLAINT
This case is before the Court on Plaintiff Tax Analysts' motion for leave to amend its complaint to include documents outside the time period of its original FOIA request, and to ensure that IRS complies with section 3509 of the Internal Revenue Service Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 ("IRSRRA"), Pub. L. 105-206, 112 Stat. 685, 772 (codified as I.R.C. § 6110 (West Supp. 1999)). Under Rule 15(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, leave to amend a complaint "shall be freely given when justice so requires." Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a); see Firestone v. Firestone, 16 F.3d 1205, 1208 (D.C. Cir.1996). "In the absence of any apparent or declared reason — such as undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive on the part of the movant, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the opposing party by virtue of allowance of the amendment, futility of amendment, etc. — the leave sought should, as the rules require, be 'freely given.'" Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962)).
Applying this standard to Plaintiff's motion to amend, the Court shall exercise its discretion to grant in part and deny in part the Plaintiffs motion to amend. To the extent that Plaintiff wishes to places the IRSRRA "front and center" of this case, see Pl.'s Mot. for Leave at 3, the motion must be denied as futile for the reasons stated in the Court's memorandum opinion and order issued this same day, in which the Court granted the IRS's motion to dismiss the complaint to the extent that it sought release of all documents affected by the IRSRRA. Accordingly, the motion to amend shall be denied as to TLBs, post-1985 LGMs, and TAs to the field.
To the extent that the Plaintiff wishes to amend the complaint to remove all temporal limitations on its request for LMs, PIRs, FSA Reports, and TAs other than TAs to the field, the Court shall grant Plaintiffs motion to amend. Plaintiff has satisfied FOIA's jurisdictional requirements by properly exhausting its administrative remedies, see Oglesby v. United States Dep't of the Army, 920 F.2d 57, 61 (D.C. Cir. 1990) (describing FOIA's mandatory exhaustion requirements), therefore the only question is whether Plaintiff will amend this complaint or file a new suit which, as a practical matter, would be assigned to the undersigned as a related case and consolidated with the above-captioned action. Courts have favored granting leave where amendment "will enable the Court to award the most complete relief in one action and avoid waste, delay and cost of a separate action." Armstrong v. Bush, 807 F. Supp. 816, 819-20 (D.D.C. 1992). Based on Plaintiff s representation that the requested amendment will not require any new discovery or summary judgment briefing, the Court finds that the IRS would not be prejudiced by the requested amendment. See Pl.'s Reply at 9. Accordingly, it is, this 31 day of March, 2000, hereby
ORDERED that Plaintiffs Motion For Leave to Amend [#47] is GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART.
SO ORDERED
COLLEEN KOLLAR-KOTELLY
United States District Judge