Cross Fire & Security Co., Inc. et al v. Alan Doorly et al
- Katherine Failla
- 1:25-cv-04846
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Cross Fire v. Doorly, Judge Failla granted sealing and authorized a redacted public complaint to protect Brendan Doorly’s privacy.
The order affects Cross Fire & Security Co., Inc., North American Fire Holdings, LLC doing business as Altus Fire & Life Safety, Brendan Doorly’s privacy interest, and public access to the complaint and its exhibits.
What happened
In Cross Fire & Security Co. v. Alan Doorly, the plaintiffs asked the court to seal the original complaint and allow a public version with limited redactions. The defendants consented to the request.
The plaintiffs sought to remove the dollar amounts that two Cross Fire co-founders, Brendan Doorly and Kevin Maguire, received from the company’s 2021 sale. They said the amounts were commercial information, involved the privacy interests of people who were not parties to the case, and were not needed to decide the lawsuit.
Judge Katherine Failla granted the application. She found that the proposed redaction was narrowly tailored to protect Brendan Doorly’s privacy interest because the information concerned a third party and was not essential to deciding the case. The court directed the plaintiffs to file the redacted complaint with its existing attachments, sealed the original complaint and exhibits, and terminated the pending motion.
The detailed version
- Cross Fire & Security Co., Inc. et al v. Alan Doorly et al · No. 1:25-cv-04846
- Katherine Failla
- Sept. 24, 2025
Background
Cross Fire & Security Co., Inc. and North American Fire Holdings, LLC, doing business as Altus Fire & Life Safety, asked the court to seal the complaint filed at docket entry 1 and permit them to file a further redacted version publicly. The defendants consented to the request.
The requested redactions concerned the dollar amounts that Cross Fire co-founders Brendan Doorly and Kevin Maguire received when Cross Fire was sold in 2021. The plaintiffs said Brendan Doorly had raised a confidentiality concern about the proceeds, although the plaintiffs disagreed that the transaction documents required confidentiality. They nonetheless sought to remove the amounts from two paragraphs of the complaint. The plaintiffs argued that the information was commercial, implicated the privacy interests of third parties, and was not essential to deciding the case or understanding the court’s work.
Ruling
The court granted the application. It agreed that the proposed redaction was narrowly tailored to protect Brendan Doorly’s privacy interest. The court emphasized that the information concerned a third party and was not essential to the adjudication of the case.
The court directed the plaintiffs to file the redacted complaint together with all attachments currently filed at docket entry 1. The Clerk of Court was directed to seal docket entry 1, including its exhibits, and to terminate the pending motion at docket entry 28.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.