Mullen Automotive, Inc. v. Clear Street Markets LLC
- Louis Stanton
- 1:23-cv-10637
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 16
Mullen Automotive v. Clear Street Markets: Judge Stanton entered a protective order governing confidential discovery materials in the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs, defendants, nonparties producing discovery, recipients of protected discovery, their attorneys and litigation personnel, and others who receive or access confidential or highly confidential materials in the action.
What happened
In Mullen Automotive, Inc. v. Clear Street Markets LLC, the parties asked the Southern District of New York to approve an agreement protecting private and competitively sensitive information exchanged during discovery.
The order allows parties and nonparties to label discovery materials as “Confidential” or “Highly Confidential,” limits who may receive those materials, and restricts their use to this lawsuit and related appeals. It also establishes procedures for challenging confidentiality labels, filing protected materials with the court, handling accidental disclosure and privileged materials, and returning or destroying materials after the case ends.
Judge Louis L. Stanton approved the stipulated protective order. The order concerns discovery management and does not decide the parties’ underlying claims or the admissibility of evidence.
The detailed version
- Mullen Automotive, Inc. v. Clear Street Markets LLC · No. 1:23-cv-10637
- Louis Stanton
- June 17, 2025
Background
The plaintiffs are Mullen Automotive, Inc., Hyon Cha, and Shayan Khorrami. The defendants are IMC Financial Markets, Clear Street Markets LLC, Clear Street LLC, UBS Securities LLC, and John Does 1 through 10. Through their attorneys, the parties stipulated to a confidentiality agreement and protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c). They anticipated that discovery would involve confidential, proprietary, private, and competitively sensitive information.
Order
The court approved the protective order after finding that good cause existed for a suitably limited confidentiality order during the pretrial phase. A producing party may designate discovery material as “Confidential” when it reasonably and in good faith believes the material includes categories such as previously undisclosed financial information, business plans, product-development information, trade secrets, confidential customer information, sensitive personal information, or information that law requires to be kept confidential.
A producing party may use the “Highly Confidential” designation for material whose disclosure to people outside specified groups could reasonably be expected to cause irreparable harm or materially impair the producing party’s legitimate competitive interests. Receiving parties generally may not disclose confidential material except to listed groups, including outside counsel and litigation support staff, certain in-house counsel, certain current officers, directors, or employees, consultants and experts who sign a nondisclosure agreement, mediators, authors and recipients identified on documents, witnesses, insurers, agreed-upon individuals, and the court. Highly confidential material may be disclosed only to narrower groups unless the producing party gives written consent or the court orders otherwise.
The order permits confidentiality designations for documents and testimony and provides procedures for correcting an omitted designation. It states that the order does not waive objections to discovery, privilege, or evidentiary admissibility. It also states that the court has not independently found that any particular material is confidential and may later decide whether confidential treatment is appropriate.
Court filings and disputes
When a party files confidential material or papers revealing it, the filing party generally must publicly file a redacted version and submit an unredacted version under seal, along with an application explaining the reasons for sealing or redaction. The producing party bears the burden of justifying the requested protection. The order warns that material introduced as evidence at trial may not remain sealed.
A party may object to a confidentiality designation before trial. If the parties cannot resolve the dispute, they may bring it to the court under Local Civil Rule 37.2. Until the court rules, the material remains protected, subject to the order’s provisions for court review.
The order also requires notice and reasonable efforts to retrieve material that was disclosed without authorization. It addresses the inadvertent production of privileged or otherwise protected material and provides that such production will not itself waive the privilege if the producing party follows the notice and identification procedures in the order. These provisions are entered under Federal Rule of Evidence 502(d) and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(5)(B).
Duration and disposition
Within 60 days after final disposition of the action, including appeals, recipients generally must return or destroy confidential and highly confidential material. Attorneys specifically retained for the action may keep archival copies of specified litigation files and work product, which remain subject to the order. The order survives the end of the litigation, and the court retains jurisdiction to enforce its obligations or impose contempt sanctions. The parties may modify the order through a written stipulation and court order, subject to the order’s stated terms.
Disposition
Judge Louis L. Stanton approved the stipulated confidentiality agreement and protective order. This was a discovery-related procedural order; it did not resolve the merits of the lawsuit.
Read the full 16-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.