Jones v. PGA Tour, Inc.
- Beth Freeman
- 5:22-cv-04486
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 12
In Jones v. PGA Tour, Judge Freeman granted Jones’s sealing motion and granted in part and denied in part the Tour’s motion.
The plaintiffs, PGA Tour, Inc., LIV Golf, Inc., and the public’s access to the listed court filings and exhibits were affected. The court sealed specified materials while leaving Exhibit 4 unsealed.
What happened
In Jones v. PGA Tour, Inc., the parties asked the court to seal portions of their filings and exhibits related to a motion about dividing the trial. The materials had been designated confidential by the PGA Tour, Inc., Clout Public Affairs, LLC, or LIV Golf, Inc.
The court applied a lower standard because the filings concerned trial organization and were only indirectly related to the case’s merits. It found good cause to seal materials involving business strategies, financial information, negotiations, corporate decisions, legal communications, and player agreements.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman granted the plaintiffs’ sealing motion. She granted in part and denied in part the Tour’s motion, denying sealing for one exhibit that contained no confidential information and granting the requested sealing for the other listed materials.
The detailed version
- Jones v. PGA Tour, Inc. · No. 5:22-cv-04486
- Beth Freeman
- May 18, 2023
Background
The court considered two administrative motions asking whether another party’s designated material should be sealed. Both motions concerned briefing and exhibits submitted in connection with the plaintiffs’ motion to bifurcate, meaning to divide the trial into separate parts.
The plaintiffs’ motion, ECF No. 332, addressed portions of their motion to bifurcate and related exhibits that the PGA Tour, Inc. and non-party Clout Public Affairs, LLC had designated confidential. The Tour supported sealing, while Clout did not submit a supporting statement. The Tour’s motion, ECF No. 374, addressed portions of the Tour’s opposition to bifurcation and related exhibits that LIV Golf, Inc. had designated confidential. LIV supported sealing.
Legal standard
The court explained that judicial records are generally available to the public. Under Ninth Circuit law, materials more than tangentially related to the merits generally require compelling reasons for sealing, while materials only tangentially related to the merits may be sealed upon a showing of good cause. The court held that the good-cause standard applied because the requests concerned briefing on a motion to bifurcate, which was only tangentially related to the merits.
The court also explained that the party seeking to seal material designated confidential by another party must identify the private or public interests supporting sealing, the injury that would result from disclosure, and why a narrower alternative would not be sufficient. The designating party bears the burden of establishing that sealing is appropriate.
Court’s analysis
The court found that the Tour showed good cause to seal material concerning business strategy, competitively sensitive information about Tour operations and corporate decision-making, communications between Tour executives and consultants, and consultants’ analysis and work product. The court relied on the Tour’s statement and a declaration describing potential competitive harm from disclosure.
The court also found that LIV showed good cause to seal material concerning its formation plans and strategy, business communications, corporate governance, financial information, player agreements, recruiting strategy, event structure, payment decisions, and negotiations. The court relied on LIV’s statement and a declaration describing potential harm, including competitors’ ability to counter LIV’s strategy and harm to future negotiations.
Disposition
The court granted the plaintiffs’ administrative motion, ECF No. 332, as set out in the document-by-document table. It granted the Tour’s administrative motion, ECF No. 374, in part and denied it in part.
For the ECF No. 332 materials listed in the table, the court granted sealing for the identified portions of the motion to bifurcate and for the identified exhibits, including Exhibits G, J, K, O, P, Q, R, S, T, and U. For the ECF No. 374 materials, the court granted sealing for the listed portions and exhibits, including Exhibits 1 through 3 and 5 through 18, Exhibit 19 as to the redacted version filed at ECF No. 397-3, and Exhibit 32. The court denied sealing for Exhibit 4 because it contained no information designated confidential and had already been filed publicly. The order was signed by Judge Beth Labson Freeman on May 18, 2023.
Read the full 12-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.