Kavcic v. Broadcom Inc.
- James Donato
- 3:20-cv-01246
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Kavcic v. Broadcom Inc., Judge Donato denied Kavcic’s motion to seal and ordered unredacted filings by February 17, 2023.
Aleksandar Kavcic, Broadcom Inc., the other parties to the case, and members of the public seeking access to the court filings.
What happened
In Kavcic v. Broadcom Inc., Aleksandar Kavcic asked to keep his motion for judgment on the pleadings and supporting declaration entirely sealed because they discussed a consultant agreement with Broadcom. The agreement concerned claims in the case.
The court explained that court records are generally public and that a party seeking secrecy must provide specific facts showing that strong reasons for sealing outweigh public access. Kavcic relied on an earlier sealing order and provided no new information. The court found that the agreement was a short, generic contract without potentially sensitive or damaging information.
Judge Donato denied the sealing request and directed Kavcic to file unredacted versions of the covered documents by February 17, 2023.
The detailed version
- Kavcic v. Broadcom Inc. · No. 3:20-cv-01246
- James Donato
- Feb. 10, 2023
Background
Aleksandar Kavcic asked the court to seal all of his motion for judgment on the pleadings and the supporting declaration. Those documents concerned the contents of a November 2016 consultant agreement between Kavcic and Broadcom Inc. The opinion states that earlier requests by the parties to seal filings revealing the agreement’s contents had been denied.
Legal standard
The court applied the general rule that judicial records are public and that the public has a presumptive right to access them. The party seeking to seal records must identify compelling reasons, supported by specific facts, that outweigh the policies favoring disclosure. General claims of possible competitive or commercial harm, and a designation of material as confidential under a protective order, are not enough.
Ruling
Kavcic relied entirely on an earlier order to support sealing and submitted no new information explaining why the consultant agreement should remain undisclosed. The court had previously described the agreement as a short, generic contract without potentially sensitive or damaging information and had found the parties’ confidentiality assertions conclusory and unsupported. For the same reasons, Judge Donato denied the sealing request. The court directed Kavcic to file unredacted versions of the documents covered by the request by February 17, 2023.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.