Giuffre v. Maxwell
- Loretta Preska
- 1:15-cv-07433
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 51
In Giuffre v. Maxwell, Judge Preska ordered many sealed materials unsealed while protecting some Does’ identities and allowing 14 days to appeal.
The parties, the numerous people identified as Does, and the public are affected. Many documents and identities will be unsealed, while the identities and identifying information of certain alleged victims, minor victims, peripheral outsiders, and others will remain sealed. The order is stayed for 14 days to allow affected Does to appeal.
What happened
Giuffre v. Maxwell concerns the court’s review of documents sealed in this civil case and the identities of people identified as Does. The court applied the presumption that court filings should generally be accessible to the public.
The court found that many Does had not objected to disclosure, had already been identified publicly, or were discussed in publicly available materials. In other instances, the sealed material was not sensitive, was not salacious, or involved only limited references such as discovery disclosures, search terms, or deposition questions.
Judge Loretta A. Preska ordered the materials concerning many Does unsealed in full. She kept the names and identifying information of certain alleged victims, including some alleged minor victims, and certain peripheral people sealed. The court stayed the order for 14 days so affected Does could appeal before the documents were prepared for public posting.
The detailed version
- Giuffre v. Maxwell · No. 1:15-cv-07433
- Loretta Preska
- Dec. 18, 2023
Background
This order addresses the continued sealing of documents and the identities of people identified in the case as Does. The court referred to its earlier descriptions of the applicable law and the unsealing process. It applied the presumption of public access to court records and explained that the person seeking continued sealing bears the burden of showing specific interests that outweigh that presumption.
Findings
For many Does, the court found that no objection to unsealing had been raised or that no specific privacy or other interest had been identified. The court also relied on facts such as prior media interviews, public testimony, publicly available police reports, prior releases by the Court of Appeals, public lawsuits, public criminal proceedings, and already unredacted docket materials. For other Does, the court found that the sealed material was not salacious, consisted primarily of discovery disclosures or search terms, contained only passing references, or had already been made public.
The court ordered the material relating to many identified Does unsealed in full. It also ordered that some Doe names or identifying information remain sealed. Those exceptions included alleged minor victims or other alleged victims who had not spoken publicly and had maintained their privacy. The court likewise kept sealed the identities of certain people it described as peripheral outsiders, and it continued redacting information that could identify another person whose identity the Court of Appeals had kept sealed. In one instance, the court kept a Doe’s name redacted in a particular document because disclosure could reveal sensitive information about an alleged minor victim, while ordering the remaining material concerning that Doe unsealed.
Disposition
Judge Loretta A. Preska stayed the unsealing order for 14 days to give any affected Doe an opportunity to appeal. After that period, the court directed counsel to confer, prepare the documents for unsealing, and post them on the docket. This order concerns access to sealed court materials and does not decide the underlying allegations described in those materials.
Read the full 51-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.