Monterey Bay Military Housing, LLC v. Ambac Assurance Corporation

Background

The plaintiffs are eighteen entities that constructed housing at U.S. military bases nationwide. They allege that the defendants—lenders, loan servicers, and insurers for the housing projects—formed an enterprise to profit illegally from project financing. The second amended complaint asserts civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act claims, a conspiracy claim under that law, and state-law claims.

The defendants moved for summary judgment, and the plaintiffs moved for partial summary judgment. In connection with those motions, the plaintiffs and the non-parties Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc. and New York Life Insurance Company sought to seal or redact more than 1,000 documents in the summary-judgment record. The defendants also filed sealing motions, generally explaining that they had submitted documents in redacted or sealed form because plaintiffs or third parties had designated them confidential.

Legal standard

The court held that materials filed with the summary-judgment motions are judicial documents because they are relevant to the court’s decision-making. Those materials therefore carry a strong presumption of public access under the common law and the First Amendment. A party seeking sealing must provide specific facts showing that sealing is necessary to protect a higher value and is narrowly tailored to that interest. The court must weigh those interests against public access, including privacy and security concerns.

Rulings on the sealing requests

Plaintiffs’ requests. The plaintiffs’ request concerning hundreds of alleged sensitive business documents was granted only for redactions required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2, such as home addresses, telephone numbers, and banking information. The request was otherwise denied without prejudice because the plaintiffs did not provide document-specific explanations. A new motion may be filed if it follows the court’s instructions.

The request concerning military-base parcel descriptions was granted as to sealing Exhibit 129 to the declaration of Rachel E. Epstein, and redaction was authorized for the remaining documents in that category. The court found that military and individual service-member privacy and security interests outweighed the public interest in access to the precise parcel-location information.

The requests concerning internal-investigation materials were denied as to Exhibits 112, 143, 151, 156, 186, 196, 322, and 323, and as to Exhibit 116. The court found that the plaintiffs’ explanations were conclusory, unsupported by case law, or not specific to the documents. It also found that some material was already public, some documents appeared unrelated to an internal investigation, and the plaintiffs had not explained why other documents required sealing. The court separately granted the plaintiffs’ motions to withdraw certain sealing requests concerning Rule 5.2 redactions.

Jones Lang LaSalle’s requests. Jones Lang’s requests to withdraw confidentiality designations and unseal certain documents were granted. The court denied the request to seal Exhibit 61 because the information was from 2002 and Jones Lang had not shown that disclosure could cause competitive harm in 2024. It also denied the request concerning Exhibit 133, which contained high-level Army information from nearly twenty-five years earlier. The request concerning the remaining documents listed in Appendix A was denied without prejudice because Jones Lang did not provide document-level justifications. Documents listed in Appendix B were ordered unsealed because Jones Lang had abandoned its confidentiality designation and the plaintiffs’ related sealing request had been denied.

New York Life’s request. New York Life’s motion to seal ten pages was denied. The court found that the information was twenty-one years old and that New York Life had not explained how its disclosure could cause competitive harm.

Defendants’ requests. Ambac’s redactions required by Rule 5.2(a) were approved. The defendants’ sealing or redaction requests were otherwise denied because the defendants did not independently claim that sealing was appropriate and had filed the materials in response to confidentiality designations by plaintiffs or third parties.

Other motions and final dispositions

The court granted the plaintiffs’ motion to file forty-four exhibits in native format by hand delivery. It denied the plaintiffs’ request for oral argument on the defendants’ summary-judgment motions, while stating that the court would notify the parties if it later concluded that oral argument would be productive.

The conclusion lists these dispositions: Docket Nos. 857, 873, 908, 964, 969, and 1000 were denied; Docket Nos. 876, 934, 955, 958, 965, and 999 were granted in part and denied in part; Docket No. 916 was granted; and Docket Nos. 1005 and 1009 were granted. The clerk was directed to terminate all of those motions. Any new sealing motion was due by December 18, 2024 and had to include a spreadsheet with document-level information and justification, including an explanation for seeking protection of information more than ten years old.