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"the statute of limitations applies to the FIRST FILING... and incidentally does not have application to a FOIA request."

From the now deleted source: "There is a [deleted]-year statute of limitations for suing under the FOIA. This means that you have to file a lawsuit within [deleted] years of the date you made your request - even if you have received an incomplete response from the agency."

The "request" referred to is the initial FOIA request. That's when the statute of limitations clock started running.

"You are picking nits while Lahr is following the proper procedure."

Lahr's lawsuit would not have been dismissed as "premature" and he would not have had to start all over again from square one, submitting another FOIA request, if he had followed the "proper procedure". The statute of limitations does not start over again, however. It has kept right on ticking since his first FOIA request. [Source deleted]

From the court record already posted in this thread [and not yet deleted]:

"Scheduling conference held. Charles S. Kim, counsel for Boeing - possible intervenor in this action, is also present. Parties inform Court of dispute as to the actual documents at issue in this matter. Court finds this matter premature to proceed at this time and dismisses this action without prejudice."

The presence of a lawyer from Boeing's legal team as "possible intervenor" dramatizes that the core issue is proprietary information/specs. That's what Ray Lahr, now represented by a lawyer, has to try to skirt around in his FOIA requests.

"Although the law requires federal courts to give priority to FOIA suits, they can still take about a year, and maybe two or three years if a lower court decision is appealed to higher courts. Be warned, the government may use all kinds of courtroom maneuvers to delay or prevent mandatory disclosure - you have to decide how far you want to take your request." [Source deleted]

The court system is the lawyers' playpen.

And the statute of limitations clock is still ticking.

But if or when Ray Lahr's quest fails, which I believe is inevitable because of the proprietary information/specs issue that existed long before the crash of TWA Flight 800, the legal geniuses in their own minds such as Swordmaker or the Great Paralegal (GREPAR) can step up to the plate and file their own FOIA requests and start a new clock running.

The "Missile Witnesses" Myth FBI Chief Metallurgist Blows Whistle On Kallstrom's Wild Goose Chase

Circular logic "a logical error, caused by first making some assumption that can't be proven true, then, on the basis of that assumption, deriving some result that is then used to "prove" that the first assumption is true.

You and all the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats made the same "logical error" at the outset of the investigation, the ASSUMPTIONS that the streak of light seen by many witnesses was the ascending fiery exhaust of a missile in flight and that the Massive Fireball was the Initiating Event when "the missile" intercepted the airliner. Therefore, it became your duty as Patriots to prove you were right. Therefore, those who disagreed with your interpretation of the witness reports are government agent disinformationalists engaged in the felonious criminal coverup of a heinous crime, the missile shootdown of TWA Flight 800.

In short, you've brainwashed yourselves.

And in your clumsy efforts to pound square pegs into round holes to try to prove you're right, you've run off ALL members of congress, past and present, the press [with the exception of the green men from Mars branch] and the public has walked away.

Your efforts to try to explain the wacky "coverup" allegations are grotesque.

"In my view, it does not take thousands to cover up this... it takes only a few, properly placed. It is my viewpoint that it was a terrorist act. The cover-up may be the result of the US Navy's FAILURE to intercept and capture the occupants of the two missile firing boats or it may be because the administration did not want a failure on its record in the upcoming elections. Unlike you, I keep an open mind on this." [emphasis yours]

To support your allegation that at least some of the witnesses should have testified before the NTSB, you came up with the following.

"In a trial, best evidence is primary evidence. A witness deposition is not permited or admissable unless the deposed is NOT AVAILABLE and even if admitted, the jurors are told to give it less weight than actual testimony. A police officer's report of what a witness said is inadmissable as hearsay. In this case were the witnesses unavailable??? Were they dead? No? Then the NTSB did not have to "rely" on the flawed reports from the FBI."

"I suggest that there are witnesses with more probitive value than others. I would believe it would be prudent to call those with the most detailed and complete accounts. I do not need to name them. There is a world of difference between NO EYEWITNESSES and even ONE."

SOMEBODY would have to name them.

WHO would you and the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats have trusted to make the selections? The NTSB? The FBI? The civil litigants' lawyers? Asmodeus? Ian Goddard? Bill Donaldson? Reed Irvine? James Sanders? Acehai? Swordmaker?

SOMEBODY would have had to gather up the documentation on ALL of their prior interviews to see if their contentions about what they actually saw changed over time as the result of input from other sources aka tainting.

WHO would you and the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats have trusted to do that? The NTSB? The FBI? The civil litigants' lawyers? Asmodeus? Ian Goddard? Bill Donaldson? Reed Irvine? James Sanders? Acehai? Swordmaker?

SOMEBODY would have had to question them.

This means that you have to file a lawsuit within [deleted] years of the date you made your request

You are again obfuscating the issue. Most civil statutes of limitation start ticking their clocks at the time of the injury or of the plaintiff becoming aware of his injury. In a Freedom of Information request the initiating event is not an injury but the failure of a governmental agency to follow the law.

The STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS is satisfied on the FIRST FILING OF A LAWSUIT. Once the filing has been made, the statute of limitations has been met regardless of how long it takes for the suit to wend its way through the court system.

Now, because of defects in the descriptions of the documents Lahr had requested that original request for documents has been voided... and his NEW request, with the corrected information, starts the FOIA statute of limitations running again. It is as though the first request did not occur. If the NTSB complies satisfactorily with his request, then a suit will be unnecessary. If it does not, then Lahr needs only file again.