Intuit Inc. v. H&R Block, Inc.
- Beth Freeman
- 5:24-cv-00253
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 10
In Intuit v. HRB Tax Group, Judge Freeman granted three sealing motions and granted in part and denied in part another, with denials without prejudice.
Intuit Inc. and Block were affected by the sealing rulings, and the order also affected which portions of the related court filings would be publicly accessible.
What happened
Intuit Inc. v. HRB Tax Group, Inc., et al. concerns four requests to seal parts of court filings connected to the parties’ requests for a preliminary injunction.
Intuit and Block asked to keep confidential business information, tax-expert training materials, business data, and customer-related metrics from public view. The court applied different standards depending on how closely the filings related to the case’s underlying issues and found that the approved redactions were sufficiently limited.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman granted ECF Nos. 90, 97, and 99, and granted in part and denied in part ECF No. 91. All denials were without prejudice, and the court set September 1, 2024, deadlines for any renewed motions and certain public versions of the filings.
The detailed version
- Intuit Inc. v. H&R Block, Inc. · No. 5:24-cv-00253
- Beth Freeman
- Aug. 12, 2024
Background
The court considered four administrative motions concerning sealing court filings connected to the parties’ preliminary-injunction motions:
- Intuit’s motion to seal portions of its preliminary-injunction motion and supporting documents, ECF No.
- 2. Intuit’s motion asking whether another party’s material should be sealed, ECF No.
- 3. Block’s motion asking whether another party’s material should be sealed, ECF No.
- 4. Intuit’s motion to seal portions of Exhibit A attached to its opposition to a motion to strike, ECF No. 99.
Legal standard
The court explained that judicial records connected more than tangentially to the merits of a case are subject to a strong presumption of public access. A party seeking to seal those records must show compelling reasons that outweigh public access. Records connected only tangentially to the merits are subject to the lower good-cause standard, which requires a specific showing of likely harm or prejudice if the information is disclosed.
Rulings
The court granted ECF No. 90. It found compelling reasons to seal the identified portions of Intuit’s filings because they contained sensitive tax-expert training materials, confidential business data and customer-satisfaction or conversion metrics, customer data, and proprietary software and tools. The court also found the requested redactions narrowly tailored.
The court granted in part and denied in part ECF No. 91. It granted sealing for portions of Intuit’s preliminary-injunction motion and exhibits that contained Block’s business metrics, strategies, decisions, consumer data, marketing strategies, and pricing information. It denied sealing for specified portions that Block did not seek to keep under seal. It also granted sealing for several exhibits containing Block’s business strategies, marketing decisions, business data, pricing decisions, internal communications, and product strategies, while denying sealing for specified portions of deposition transcripts that Block did not seek to keep under seal.
The court granted ECF No. 97. It approved redactions in Block’s preliminary-injunction motion and supporting materials that contained tax-expert training materials, confidential business data, customer-satisfaction and product-usage metrics, and related business information.
The court granted ECF No. 99. It approved redactions in an expert report because the highlighted portions contained confidential business data, customer-satisfaction metrics, and sensitive tax-expert training material.
Effect of the order
The court stated that all denials were without prejudice. Any refiled administrative motion or declaration had to be filed by September 1, 2024. By that date, the parties also had to file public versions of filings when the court-approved redactions and sealing were narrower than the redactions in the existing public versions, unless they filed a renewed sealing motion for the document.
Read the full 10-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.