Background
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita issued civil investigative demands (CIDs) to Evansville manufacturer Berry Global Group and the Haitian Center of Evansville, a nonprofit serving the city’s Haitian community. A CID is a statutory demand requiring documents, written answers, or testimony before litigation. The demands said the Attorney General was investigating human labor trafficking and indecent nuisances, and they sought extensive information about Berry Global’s employment of migrant workers and the Haitian Center’s services.
Neither demand identified a suspected perpetrator, victim, incident, complaint, or tip. The recipients declined to comply, and the Attorney General petitioned the Vanderburgh Superior Court to enforce the demands. His filings cited increased migration to Evansville and migrants’ vulnerability to exploitation, but still did not identify a discrete suspected violation. At argument, counsel said the office was not prepared to identify a particular suspect engaged in a particular trafficking act. The trial court denied enforcement, and the Attorney General appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed and held that Indiana Code section 4-6-3-3 permits a CID only when an actual investigation already exists. Judge Vaidik explained that an investigation requires a factual predicate—such as a complaint, tip, lead, report, or documentation—providing an articulable reason to suspect particular wrongdoing. Although the Attorney General’s burden in an enforcement action is small, it protects Indiana residents and businesses from fishing expeditions, retaliation, and arbitrary demands.
The statutory sequence was decisive. The Attorney General must first possess a concrete basis for investigating a potential violation and may then demand information from someone reasonably believed to have relevant material. He cannot select a person or company without a suspected violation and use a CID to search for facts that might justify the selection afterward. General concern that migrants are vulnerable to trafficking amounted, at most, to a search for something to investigate. Because the office identified no factual predicate, there was no qualifying investigation and no authority to issue the demands. The court therefore deemed both CIDs unauthorized, invalid, and unenforceable.
The panel drew its framework from the Indiana Supreme Court’s decision in Nu-Sash of Indianapolis, Inc. v. Carter, which requires the State to demonstrate an investigation and reasonable grounds to believe the recipient possesses relevant information. Earlier enforceable demands had followed consumer complaints about possible statutory violations. Here, by comparison, the Attorney General never alleged that comparable information existed. The court did not need to resolve claims that immigration policy, rather than trafficking, motivated the demands; even accepting the stated trafficking concern, an abstract concern could not satisfy the statute.
Key Takeaways
- An Indiana Attorney General CID requires an existing investigation grounded in concrete, particularized information; a broad policy concern or hunch is insufficient.
- The factual predicate must come before compulsory demands. The CID power cannot be used to discover whether there might be grounds to begin an investigation.
- In a CID-enforcement action, the Attorney General must show both that an investigation exists and that reasonable grounds connect the recipient’s information to that investigation.
Why It Matters
This published decision places a significant Indiana-specific limit on the Attorney General’s pre-suit investigative authority. Companies, nonprofits, and their counsel receiving a CID should examine whether the demand identifies—or the State can demonstrate to a court—a concrete investigation rather than a generalized area of concern. The ruling does not require the government to expose sensitive investigative material publicly; the court noted that legitimate confidentiality concerns can be handled through in-camera review. But the State must possess some particularized predicate capable of judicial review.
The practical impact extends beyond the trafficking statutes invoked here because section 4-6-3-3 applies across statutes enforced by the Attorney General, including consumer-protection laws. The opinion protects Hoosier organizations from being compelled to undertake costly production merely because they serve a population or operate in a field associated with a perceived risk. At the same time, it preserves CID authority where a complaint, tip, incident, or comparable lead supplies an articulable basis for a genuine investigation.