In re Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. Securities Litigation
- Lewis Liman
- 1:20-cv-08585
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In re Turquoise Hill Securities Litigation: Judge Liman granted five sealing motions, granted three in part and denied them in part, and denied a search-term motion as moot.
The parties’ filings and discovery materials were affected, along with third parties whose personally identifiable information appeared in the materials and the public’s access to court records. The order did not decide the underlying securities-litigation claims.
What happened
In In re Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. Securities Litigation, the parties asked the court to seal exhibits connected to disputes over an expert, messaging documents, and search terms. The search-term dispute became moot after defendants agreed to run all requested searches and produce responsive documents.
The court granted five sealing motions. It granted three other sealing motions in part and denied them in part, requiring some contract information and discovery correspondence to be unsealed while allowing targeted redactions or further redaction requests. The court said sealing was justified for third-party personal information and confidential business information.
Judge Liman also denied the motion to compel defendants to run search terms as moot. The documents covered by the partially denied sealing motions were to remain sealed while the parties could seek targeted redactions by March 19, 2025.
The detailed version
- In re Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. Securities Litigation · No. 1:20-cv-08585
- Lewis Liman
- Mar. 5, 2025
What the order addressed
The parties moved to seal exhibits filed in connection with three discovery-related matters: defendants’ motion to disqualify the lead plaintiff’s expert, the lead plaintiff’s motion to compel defendants to produce messaging documents, and the lead plaintiff’s motion to compel defendants to run search terms. The expert-disqualification motion and the messaging-document motion had already been resolved by earlier orders. The search-term motion became moot after defendants agreed to run all requested search terms and produce responsive documents.
This order decided the related motions to seal and the search-term motion.
Sealing motions concerning messaging documents
The court granted the motions to seal at Dkt. Nos. 376 and 406. It found that the lower presumption of public access applicable to filings connected with discovery disputes was overcome by the need to protect personally identifiable information of third parties and confidential commercially sensitive information.
Sealing motions concerning search terms
The court granted the motions to seal at Dkt. Nos. 379 and 405. Although the underlying search-term motion was moot, the court found that the sealed material was minimally useful to people monitoring the federal courts.
Sealing motion concerning the expert-disqualification matter
For the motion at Dkt. No. 344, the court allowed sealing of third-party personally identifiable information and Exhibits 3 and 6 through 9 to the Concannon Declaration. The court found those exhibits minimally relevant to public understanding of the expert-disqualification issues and also found that they contained confidential business information.
The court did not allow Exhibits 4 and 5 to the Concannon Declaration to remain sealed in their entirety. Those exhibits were contracts containing confidentiality provisions central to the expert-disqualification issues. The court said commercially sensitive terms and pricing information could be redacted, but information needed to understand the contracts—including confidentiality provisions, the parties to the agreements, relevant definitions, and the scope of the engagement—had to be unsealed.
Sealing motions concerning the expert-disqualification opposition and reply
For the motions at Dkt. Nos. 366 and 383, the court granted sealing for the proposed redactions to the exhibits other than Exhibits 23 and 25 to the Graziano Declaration. It found that the proposed sealing was justified to protect confidential business information and third parties’ personally identifiable information. The court denied sealing for Exhibits 23 and 25 because they contained correspondence about discovery and did not focus on commercially sensitive information. That denial was without prejudice to a motion seeking more targeted redactions.
The court granted the motion at Dkt. No. 399, finding that the redacted information was minimal and no broader than necessary to protect the identified interests.
Disposition
The court stated that the motions to seal at Dkt. Nos. 376, 379, 399, 405, and 406 were granted. It stated that the motions to seal at Dkt. Nos. 344, 366, and 383 were granted in part and denied in part. The parties could move by March 19, 2025, for targeted redactions to documents for which sealing was denied, and those documents were to remain sealed while such a motion was pending.
The court denied as moot the motion to compel defendants to run search terms at Dkt. No. 378. Judge Lewis J. Liman signed the order.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.