Napleton Orlando Imports, LLC v. Volkswagen Group of America, Inc.
- Charles Breyer
- 3:16-cv-02086
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 1
In Napleton v. Volkswagen, Judge Breyer granted in part and denied in part a motion to seal parts of a complaint.
The ruling affected the plaintiffs, the Bosch defendants, and non-party Volkswagen and Bosch employees whose information appeared in the complaint.
What happened
In Napleton Orlando Imports, LLC v. Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., the plaintiffs asked to keep parts of their third amended class-action complaint from public view.
The court allowed the plaintiffs to redact the names, job titles, and department information of non-party Volkswagen and Bosch employees. But it did not allow redactions of quotations, paraphrases, or citations to documents produced by Bosch defendants during discovery and marked confidential.
Judge Breyer ruled that the Bosch defendants had not shown that public access to the roughly decade-old documents would cause specific harm. The plaintiffs had to file a revised redacted complaint by December 10, 2019.
The detailed version
- Napleton Orlando Imports, LLC v. Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. · No. 3:16-cv-02086
- Charles Breyer
- Dec. 3, 2019
Background
The plaintiffs moved to file portions of their third amended class-action complaint under seal, meaning they sought to keep those portions from public access. The order relates to the Napleton matter in the Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” multidistrict litigation.
Ruling
The court granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ motion. It permitted the plaintiffs to redact the names, job titles, and departmental designations of non-party Volkswagen and Bosch employees.
The court denied permission to redact quotations, paraphrases, and citations to documents that the Bosch defendants produced during discovery and designated as confidential or highly confidential. The court stated that the underlying documents were approximately one decade old and that the Bosch defendants had not shown that “specific prejudice or harm will result” if the contents were not sealed.
Next step ordered
The court ordered the plaintiffs to file a revised redacted version of their third amended complaint by Tuesday, December 10, 2019.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.