Baird v. BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A.
- Haywood Gilliam
- 4:17-cv-01892
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
Baird v. BlackRock: Judge Gilliam granted the parties’ motion to seal confidential information and ordered public redacted filings.
The parties and the public’s access to portions of the court filings.
What happened
In Baird v. BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A., the parties jointly asked to seal portions of briefs concerning a motion to exclude expert testimony from Russell Wermers.
The court explained that documents tied to important motions generally require strong reasons for secrecy, while other documents require a specific showing of likely harm. The court found that the requested material contained confidential business and financial information, securities-lending information, client relationships, internal correspondence, and information from a licensed proprietary database.
Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. granted the motion to seal. He directed the parties to file public versions where required and stated that the sealed documents would remain under seal, with the public able to access only the accompanying redacted versions.
The detailed version
- Baird v. BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A. · No. 4:17-cv-01892
- Haywood Gilliam
- Nov. 12, 2020
Background
The parties filed a joint administrative motion to seal portions of their briefs related to the motion to exclude expert testimony from Russell Wermers. The motion concerned portions of exhibits attached to the parties’ briefs, including the Daubert motion, BlackRock’s opposition, and the plaintiffs’ reply.
Legal standard
The court explained that judicial records attached to a dispositive motion are ordinarily subject to a strong presumption of public access. A party seeking to seal those records must show compelling reasons, supported by specific facts, that outweigh the public interest in disclosure. Records attached to nondispositive motions are subject to the lower “good cause” standard, which requires a particularized showing that disclosure would cause specific prejudice or harm. Under either standard, a request must be narrowly tailored to seal only material entitled to protection.
Reasons for the ruling
The court found that the parties showed a compelling interest in sealing the specified portions because they contained confidential business and financial information covered by a license agreement requiring the information, and information derived from it, to remain out of the public domain. The material included confidential and proprietary information about the securities-lending business, financial information, client relationships, internal correspondence, and references to a third party’s proprietary database. The court stated that the database license required the licensee and its expert to keep the database and materials derived from it out of the public domain.
Disposition
The court granted the motion to seal, Dkt. No. 364. It directed the parties to file public versions of documents for which no public version had been filed, as indicated in the chart in the order. Documents covered by the granted sealing request would remain under seal, and the public would have access only to the redacted versions accompanying the administrative motions.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.