Pardi v. Tricida, Inc.
- Haywood Gilliam
- 4:21-cv-00076
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 5
In Pardi v. Tricida, Judge Gilliam granted in part and denied in part a motion to seal, allowing only narrow redactions of confidential clinical-trial data.
The ruling affected Klaerner, Renibus Therapeutics, the other parties, and the public. Only the specific clinical-trial information identified by Renibus could remain redacted; broader portions of the filings had to be made publicly available.
What happened
In Pardi v. Tricida, Defendant Gerrit Klaerner asked the court to seal parts of the plaintiffs’ Second Amended Complaint and filings related to his motion to dismiss. Renibus Therapeutics, a non-party, supported sealing a smaller set of information about veverimer’s development.
The court said Klaerner’s request was too general because it did not explain specifically why each passage should remain secret. Renibus identified limited, non-public clinical-trial data and represented that disclosure could cause competitive harm.
The court granted in part and denied in part the motion to seal. Judge Haywood S. Gilliam allowed only the specific information identified by Renibus to remain redacted and ordered public versions of the filings with no broader redactions.
The detailed version
- Pardi v. Tricida, Inc. · No. 4:21-cv-00076
- Haywood Gilliam
- Feb. 27, 2024
Background
Defendant Gerrit Klaerner moved to seal portions of Plaintiff’s Second Amended Complaint, the briefing on Klaerner’s motion to dismiss, and related exhibits. The filings quoted or discussed documents that Plaintiff Jeffrey Fiore received from the Food and Drug Administration. Interested non-party Renibus Therapeutics, Inc. filed a statement supporting a narrower sealing request.
Tricida, Inc. had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and was voluntarily dismissed from the case in March 2023. The opinion states that Klaerner was the only remaining defendant.
Legal standard
The court applied the “compelling reasons” standard because the documents at issue included a complaint and briefing on a motion to dismiss. That standard begins with a strong presumption that judicial records should be available to the public. The party seeking secrecy must identify specific reasons that outweigh the public’s interest in access, explain the harm that disclosure would cause, and show why narrower alternatives would not be sufficient.
Discussion
The court found Klaerner’s renewed motion relatively bare because it offered only a general statement that Renibus had an interest in confidential information concerning veverimer’s development. The court said this did not explain specifically why each identified passage should be sealed.
Renibus sought to seal only discrete portions containing confidential clinical-trial data. The information included non-public details about the trials’ structure, execution, results, and analysis, including measurements of blood bicarbonate levels related to veverimer’s effectiveness. Renibus represented that competitors could use the information to gain a competitive advantage. After reviewing the proposed redactions, the court found Renibus’s request targeted and limited and concluded that the request met the standard for sealing.
Ruling
The court GRANTED Klaerner’s motion to seal only as to the information identified by Renibus and otherwise DENIED the motion to seal. It directed the parties to file publicly available versions of the Second Amended Complaint, the motion-to-dismiss briefing, and related exhibits with redactions no broader than Renibus’s request. The court specified that only the information identified in paragraph 9 of Renibus’s supporting declaration could be redacted. Each party was made responsible for filing conforming versions of documents it had originally filed, unless the parties agreed to a different allocation of that work.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.