Total Recall Technologies v. Palmer Luckey
- William Alsup
- 3:15-cv-02281
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Total Recall Technologies v. Palmer Luckey, Judge Alsup denied seven motions to seal, ordering the documents to remain public unless an appeals court intervened.
The parties who sought to seal the documents, the people and entities whose information appeared in the filings, and members of the public seeking access to the court record.
What happened
In Total Recall Technologies v. Palmer Luckey, the parties asked the court to seal more than 100 documents connected to summary-judgment and expert-witness motions, as well as supplemental briefing. The requests covered items such as ordinary email statements, social-media posts, and portions of briefs and deposition transcripts.
The court denied all seven motions. It said the parties had used confidentiality labels indiscriminately and had not shown the required strong reasons for keeping the documents secret. The court also said the documents were important to understanding the case and that much of the information was years old. It identified only one request that might arguably have been legitimate: sealing a spreadsheet listing names and addresses of uninvolved third parties.
Judge William Alsup stayed the order until March 9 at noon so either side could seek emergency relief from the appeals court. If no such relief was granted, the documents would remain public.
The detailed version
- Total Recall Technologies v. Palmer Luckey · No. 3:15-cv-02281
- William Alsup
- Mar. 25, 2021
Background
The court considered seven administrative motions to seal more than 100 documents filed in connection with the defendants’ summary-judgment and expert-witness motions, along with documents concerning the court’s earlier order on supplemental briefing. The requested sealing covered portions of briefs, email threads, deposition transcripts, and documents concerning the early formation of Oculus. The opinion also identified requests involving ordinary statements such as “Can’t wait to try it,” “3D is essential,” and “attached is an invoice.”
Reasoning
The court criticized the parties’ indiscriminate use of confidentiality designations and stated that this practice alone warranted denying the motions in their entirety. It further held that the parties had not satisfied the “compelling reasons” standard governing requests to seal judicial records under Kamakana v. City & County of Honolulu. The court said the documents were needed for even a basic understanding of the case, that the information was stale because it arose years earlier, and that the public had a right to review documents filed in a public court. The court found only one request arguably legitimate: sealing a spreadsheet containing the names and addresses of multiple uninvolved third parties.
Ruling
Judge William Alsup denied all seven motions to seal. The order’s effectiveness was stayed until March 9 at noon to allow either side to seek emergency relief from the court of appeals; absent that relief, the documents would remain public.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.