McKeon Rolling Steel Door Co., Inc. v. U.S. Smoke & Fire Corp., et al.

Background

The court considered three motions to seal documents filed in connection with the parties’ pending motions for summary judgment. After an earlier order, the parties filed a joint letter identifying which exhibits and portions of exhibits should remain sealed and explaining the grounds for the requests.

The parties agreed that several exhibits and portions of exhibits originally submitted for sealing no longer needed that protection. The court ordered Defendants to refile those materials on the public docket in unredacted form by September 19, 2025.

Plaintiff requested continued sealing of specified exhibits and portions of exhibits, arguing that disclosure could cause competitive harm. Defendants objected to some of Plaintiff’s requests, arguing that Plaintiff had relied on conclusory assertions that the materials were intended to remain confidential. Defendants also requested continued sealing of materials containing confidential business information belonging to third parties and materials containing Defendants’ trade secrets or confidential business information that could harm their competitive position.

Legal standard

The court explained that judicial documents are presumed to be accessible to the public. Under the Second Circuit’s three-step test, the court first determines whether the materials are judicial documents useful in the judicial process; if so, it evaluates the weight of the public-access presumption; and it then balances that presumption against competing interests, including privacy interests.

The court noted that sensitive, proprietary business information may be protected when it is not generally publicly available and disclosure could cause significant competitive harm. The materials here were submitted with summary-judgment motions and were therefore judicial documents useful in the judicial process. Because they were connected to dispositive motions, the presumption of public access was substantial.

Ruling

After reviewing the materials that Plaintiff and Defendants sought to keep sealed, the court concluded that the information was not likely to be widely known outside the relevant companies, that the entities that created the documents took measures to protect it, and that disclosure could cause competitive harm. The court was not persuaded that Plaintiff’s support for certain sealing requests was merely conclusory. The court therefore upheld protection for the remaining information identified in the parties’ joint letter, while ordering the agreed-upon exhibits to be refiled publicly in unredacted form.

The court also determined that further briefing was not warranted because Defendants had already had two opportunities to present arguments about whether particular documents should remain sealed. The Clerk of Court was respectfully requested to terminate ECF 162, ECF 170, and ECF 175.