Miah v. Morgan Stanley and Co. International PLC
- Paul Engelmayer
- 1:25-cv-03582
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 7
In Miah v. Morgan Stanley, Judge Ricardo denied Miah’s request to seal or redact his address, allowing a renewed motion addressing the court’s concerns.
Habib Miah’s request to restrict public access to his address was denied, while the public’s access to the service filing remained in place. Miah may file a renewed motion addressing the court’s concerns.
What happened
In Miah v. Morgan Stanley & Co. International PLC, Habib Miah asked the court to seal or redact his personal address from an affirmation showing that defendants had served him. The court treated the request as concerning a different docket entry than the one Miah identified.
The court explained that service documents are generally subject to public access because they help show that parties received legal notice. It also noted that federal rules do not automatically require redacting a person’s address in a civil case, and that Miah had previously filed his address publicly many times. The court said he had not described his privacy and security concerns well enough to weigh them against public access.
Judge Ricardo denied the motion without prejudice, meaning Miah may file another motion addressing the concerns identified by the court. The clerk was directed to terminate the motion as denied and mail Miah a copy of the order.
The detailed version
- Miah v. Morgan Stanley and Co. International PLC · No. 1:25-cv-03582
- Paul Engelmayer
- May 9, 2025
Background
Habib Miah, representing himself, filed a motion asking the court to seal or redact his personal address from a docket filing. The motion identified ECF No. 35, but the court construed it as seeking relief concerning defendants’ affirmation of service at ECF No. 39. The court stated that the motion was identical to one Miah filed in a prior related proceeding. It therefore denied the motion for substantially the same reasons stated in the court’s order in that related proceeding.
Reasoning
The related order explained that judicial documents generally carry a presumption of public access. Courts determine whether a filing is a judicial document, assess the strength of the public-access presumption, and then balance that presumption against legitimate reasons for non-disclosure, including privacy interests.
The court concluded that an affirmation of service is a judicial document because it helps establish that a party received notice of the legal proceedings. The document therefore carried a presumption of public access, although the court described that presumption as falling between the strongest and weakest levels.
Miah said that publicly displaying his home address created serious privacy and security concerns, but he did not describe those concerns sufficiently for the court to evaluate them. The court also stated that a person’s address is not among the categories of information that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2(a) presumptively requires courts to redact. In addition, the Southern District of New York’s electronic-filing rules require redaction of a home address in criminal cases, but not civil cases. Finally, the court noted that Miah himself had filed his home address on the public docket at least twelve times, so redacting it from the affirmation of service would not fully address the concern.
Disposition
Judge Ricardo denied the motion without prejudice to a renewed motion addressing the points identified in the court’s May 9, 2025 order in the related proceeding. The clerk was directed to terminate ECF No. 40 as denied and mail a copy of the order to Miah.
Read the full 7-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.