Bryce Corp. v. XL Insurance America, Inc.

Background

This case concerns insurance coverage for two fires on November 14 and 15, 2021, at two Bryce plants. Bryce sought payment under an insurance policy from XL for property damage and business-interruption losses. The opinion states that the property-damage portion was largely resolved, while XL refused to pay most of the claimed business-interruption losses. The parties had entered a confidentiality and protective order during discovery.

Requests to Seal

XL filed letter motions asking to file certain materials related to its cross-motion for partial summary judgment under seal in their entirety or, alternatively, in redacted form. The materials included XL’s memorandum, statements of undisputed facts, a response to Bryce’s statement of facts, and exhibits to the Deckman Declaration. Bryce supported sealing materials containing Bryce’s nonpublic financial and business information, sales data, and customer names. Bryce took no position on XL’s request to seal several other exhibits.

The court’s sealing analysis concerned the presumption that court filings are publicly accessible and whether confidential information justified limiting access. Bryce argued that disclosure could give competitors detailed information about its business and could harm its customer relationships. Bryce also stated that some deposition testimony in the submitted transcripts was not cited in the summary-judgment briefing or statements of facts and therefore had limited relevance to the motions.

Ruling

The court noted that some exhibits appeared both in the Deckman Declaration and in the Joint Appendix, even though a joint appendix is intended to avoid citing the same evidence in different places. Despite that concern, the court granted both Plaintiff’s and Defendant’s applications to seal.

The court directed XL to refile the Deckman Declaration with Exhibits A-K, M-O, P-T, U-AA, and CC-KK under seal. Because docket entry 133 had already been sealed after XL’s supplemental letter motion, the court also directed XL to file a publicly available version of the Deckman Declaration with a single page marked “SEALED” in place of each exhibit covered by the sealing ruling. The Clerk was directed to maintain docket entries 129, 130, 131, and 133 under seal and to terminate the pending motions at docket entries 127 and 134.

This order ruled on access to filings. It did not decide the parties’ underlying insurance-coverage claims or the pending motions for partial summary judgment.