§ 140A.057.Documentary Material

How a document demand is carried out, and the terms favour the producing party more than might be expected.

Production happens at the recipient’s own premises. Material is made available during normal business hours on the return date at the person’s principal office or place of business, or as otherwise agreed.

Nothing is surrendered. The attorney general comes to inspect and copy.

The state bears the expense of copying, which removes the risk of a demand imposing crushing reproduction costs on its recipient.

Copies may be substituted for originals if the originals are made available for inspection — so a business keeps the documents it needs to operate.

The attorney general may elect to obtain or review information in an electronic format, which is the practical option where the material is a database rather than a file.

The recipient shall indicate in writing which documents contain trade secrets or confidential information. Flagging is mandatory, not an option, and it works with the confidentiality section that exempts the material from public disclosure.

Subsection (b) requires a sworn certificate. Production must be made under a sworn certificate in the form the demand designates, by a natural person having knowledge of the facts and circumstances relating to the production, to the effect that all of the requested material in the possession, custody, or control of the person has been produced.

That certificate is what makes the demand enforceable. It puts a named individual under oath on completeness, so an incomplete production is perjury rather than an oversight — and it pairs with the offense created for deliberate noncompliance.