Eletson Holdings Inc. v. Levona Holdings Ltd.
- Lewis Liman
- 1:23-cv-07331
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Eletson Holdings v. Levona Holdings, Judge Liman denied Reed Smith’s sealing motion without prejudice because Reed Smith and its client were not parties.
Reed Smith LLP and its client could not obtain a sealing ruling because the court said they were not parties and had no right to seek relief. The documents remained temporarily sealed, subject to a possible sealing motion by a party to the case and possible later unsealing.
What happened
In Eletson Holdings Inc. v. Levona Holdings Ltd., Reed Smith asked the court to keep documents under seal. The documents concerned an English court proceeding connected to a confidential arbitration and had been filed by another law firm.
The court said the documents were not judicial documents because they had not been submitted for consideration in deciding a request for relief. It also said that, even if they were judicial documents, the confidentiality interests connected to the arbitration outweighed the public’s access interests.
Judge Lewis J. Liman declined to hear Reed Smith’s motion and denied it without prejudice to renewal by a party in the case. The court said Reed Smith and its client were not parties and therefore had no right to seek relief. The documents were to remain sealed temporarily, with unsealing scheduled if no qualifying party filed its own motion by the stated deadline.
The detailed version
- Eletson Holdings Inc. v. Levona Holdings Ltd. · No. 1:23-cv-07331
- Lewis Liman
- July 1, 2025
Background
Reed Smith LLP submitted a letter asking the court to keep sealed documents filed by Floyd Zadkovich (US) LLP. The documents related to submissions that Reed Smith made for Eletson Gas LLC in a proceeding in the High Court of England and Wales under Section 32 of the Arbitration Act 1996. That proceeding arose from a confidential arbitration conducted under the London Maritime Arbitration Association.
Reed Smith sought continued sealing of the documents in full. It argued that the documents were not judicial documents and that the confidentiality obligations associated with the English arbitration outweighed the public’s right of access. Reed Smith also stated that it did not have access to the documents in the form filed with the court.
Court’s analysis
The court explained that a document does not become a judicial document merely because it is filed with the court. A document must be relevant to the court’s work and useful in the judicial process before the common-law right of public access applies.
The court concluded that none of the documents was a judicial document. The documents had not been submitted for the court to consider in connection with a request for relief and therefore did not have a reasonable tendency to influence a ruling on a pending motion. The court also stated that, even if the documents were judicial documents, the confidentiality interests of Reed Smith and its client in material from the confidential arbitration would outweigh the public’s access interests. The court noted that Reed Smith and Levona both recognized the confidentiality of the English proceeding.
Ruling
Judge Lewis J. Liman declined to hear Reed Smith’s motion to seal and denied it without prejudice to renewal by a party to the case. The court stated that neither Reed Smith nor its client was a party and that they therefore had no right to seek relief.
The court directed that the material remain under seal temporarily. It stated that if no party with the right to seek sealing filed a motion by 5 p.m. on July 7, 2025, the court would enter an order unsealing the documents attached to docket entry 437.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.