"A state district judge on Friday refused to delay the release of thousands of documents related to security during the construction in North Dakota of the heavily protested Dakota Access Pipeline.
South Central District Judge Cynthia Feland in late December ruled that the documents are public and subject to the state's open records law. Attorneys for pipeline developer Energy Transfer asked Feland to put on hold the part of her ruling permitting public disclosure of the records while the company appeals to the state Supreme Court.
Feland in a Friday ruling gave Energy Transfer the go-ahead to appeal, but she rejected the request to delay the public release of the records, which the company considers “confidential, proprietary, and privileged documents” that shouldn't be made public.
Feland wrote that "Energy Transfer provided no specifics and has failed to provide sufficient information to assess the validity of a claim of privilege or exception that would prohibit the disclosure of even a single document within the 16,000 documents that comprised the disputed documents.""
Blake Nicholson reports for the Bismarck Tribune January 21, 2022.
Advertisement 
