Eco Electrical Systems, LLC v. Reliaguard Inc.

Background

This omnibus order addressed motions to seal materials filed with defendants’ motions for summary judgment. The materials included exhibits and portions of plaintiff’s oppositions. The court applied the strong presumption that court filings should be publicly accessible because the materials were more than tangentially related to the merits of the case.

The court required a party seeking sealing to identify the private or public interests supporting secrecy, explain the injury that would result from disclosure, and show why a less restrictive alternative would not suffice. Requests also had to be narrowly tailored. The court stated that vague or boilerplate assertions, or reliance only on a confidentiality designation or protective order, were insufficient.

Rulings on Materials Supporting the Maydwell & Hartzell Motion

The court denied requests concerning Exhibits 2, 3, 18, 39, 40, 58, 75, 77, and 81, as well as several identified pages of plaintiff’s opposition. The reasons included that the materials went to the heart of the litigation, the explanations of competitive harm were inadequate, the requests were overbroad, or defendants had not filed the required supporting declaration. The denials for Exhibits 2, 75, 77, and 81 were expressly stated to be without prejudice, and the court said it would consider narrowly tailored redactions in a later motion.

The court granted sealing as to the photographs in Exhibit 13, Exhibit 32, Exhibits 69 and 70, and Exhibits 78 through 80. These materials contained specific and detailed confidential information that could cause Reliaguard competitive harm, and some appeared only tangentially related to the case. For Exhibit 16, the court granted the request as to the contact information of PG&E employees and indicated that the rest of the exhibit could be publicly filed. For designated portions of Exhibit 92, the court granted sealing only for material directly identifying Reliaguard’s raw-material supplier and denied the request otherwise. The court also granted the request for the corresponding supplier-identity material in a portion of plaintiff’s opposition and granted the request for the portion concerning the information covered by Exhibit 32; the remaining material was denied.

Rulings on Materials Supporting the Reliaguard and Greenjacket Motion

The court granted sealing as to the photographs in Exhibits 11 and 33, but denied it for the rest of those exhibits. It granted sealing as to the PG&E employee contact information in Exhibit 97 and denied it otherwise. It granted sealing as to the material in Exhibit 112 involving the identity of the raw-material supplier and denied it otherwise.

The court denied requests concerning Exhibits 26, 30, 102, and 111, along with several identified pages of plaintiff’s opposition. Some of those denials were without prejudice, with the court allowing the possibility of later, narrowly tailored requests. Other denials were based on the absence of a supporting declaration, the relevance of the material to the merits, or the failure of the proposed redactions to match the stated justification for sealing. For one portion of plaintiff’s opposition, the court granted sealing as to the requested material related to Exhibit 112 and denied it otherwise.

Disposition

The order ruled on sealing requests; it did not rule on the merits of the parties’ summary-judgment motions. The court ordered the parties to file documents fully complying with the order within twenty-eight days of June 22, 2022. Judge William Alsup warned that if currently sealed information became relevant at trial or otherwise, the public interest in disclosure could increase and future sealing requests could receive a different decision.