Gurminder Singh v. Google LLC
- Beth Freeman
- 5:16-cv-03734
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 11
In Gurminder Singh v. Google LLC, Judge Freeman partly granted and partly denied both sides’ requests to seal records about class certification.
Gurminder Singh and Google LLC, whose filings were partly kept under seal and partly required to be publicly filed or refiled with narrower redactions; the public also gains access to the materials the court ordered placed on the docket.
What happened
Gurminder Singh and Google LLC each asked the court to keep parts of filings and exhibits about Singh’s request to certify a class out of the public record. Google identified information about its systems for detecting invalid clicks and sensitive revenue data; Singh identified marketing and business information, including budgets and expenses.
The court granted in part and denied in part both sealing motions. It allowed specified technical, revenue, marketing, and business information to remain sealed, but ordered the parties to file more narrowly redacted versions and to place certain unsupported materials on the public docket.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman applied the requirement that sealing requests be narrowly tailored and supported by compelling reasons, and ordered the parties to file the revised materials and provide unredacted copies to the court.
The detailed version
- Gurminder Singh v. Google LLC · No. 5:16-cv-03734
- Beth Freeman
- Nov. 15, 2021
Background
The court considered two administrative motions to file court materials under seal: Singh’s motion concerning his motion for class certification and Google’s motion concerning its opposition to class certification. Each party filed a declaration supporting the other party’s motion. The materials included briefs, declarations, deposition transcripts, and exhibits.
Legal standard
The court explained that court records are generally available for public inspection. Documents more than tangentially related to the merits of a case may be sealed only for “compelling reasons.” A sealing request must also be narrowly tailored to cover only material that qualifies for sealing under the district’s local rules. A protective-order confidentiality designation alone does not establish that material is sealable.
Singh’s motion
Google narrowed the materials that it supported keeping under seal. Google stated that the materials described proprietary methods for filtering invalid clicks on Google platforms and included sensitive revenue data. The court found compelling reasons to seal the specified portions because disclosure could give competitors information about Google’s systems, help people evade Google’s invalid-click detection, and harm Google’s competitive and reputational interests.
The court therefore granted in part and denied in part Singh’s motion. It ordered specified portions of Singh’s class-certification brief and exhibits to remain under seal. It also ordered Singh to file Tang Declaration Exhibit 8 on the public docket because no party supported sealing it. Google was required to file more narrowly redacted versions of specified documents and provide highlighted, unredacted courtesy copies to the court by November 18, 2021.
Google’s motion
Google sought to seal portions of its opposition to class certification, declarations, and exhibits. Some materials contained information Google sought to protect, while others had been designated highly confidential by Singh. Singh stated that the designated materials described his marketing and business strategies, budget, and expenses, and that disclosure could cause him a competitive disadvantage.
The court found compelling reasons to seal the specified technical information about Google’s invalid-click filters and related revenue data, as well as the specified details about Singh’s marketing and business information. The court therefore granted in part and denied in part Google’s motion. It ordered specified portions of Google’s opposition and supporting materials to remain under seal. It also ordered Singh to file certain exhibits on the public docket because no party supported sealing them, and to file a more narrowly redacted version of Google’s opposition and provide an unredacted courtesy copy to the court by November 18, 2021.
Disposition
Judge Beth Labson Freeman ordered that both parties’ administrative motions to file under seal were granted in part and denied in part, in accordance with the specific rulings described in the opinion. The parties were required to file new versions of the documents and provide courtesy copies as directed.
Read the full 11-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.