Flodin v. Central Garden & Pet Company
- Jon Tigar
- 4:21-cv-01631
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Flodin v. Central Garden & Pet Company, Judge Tigar denied one sealing motion and granted in part and denied in part three others.
The plaintiffs and defendants were affected by which case materials could remain sealed. The ruling also affected public access to the court record and required the plaintiffs to file public and redacted versions of specified documents.
What happened
In Flodin v. Central Garden & Pet Company, the plaintiffs asked to seal materials connected to their opposition to a third-party complaint and to their motion for class certification.
The court held that nonpublic sales data, business strategies, and product formulas could be sealed, but that the defendants had not shown enough reason to seal information about the specific amount of avocado in the products or persin test results.
Judge Tigar denied the motion related to the third-party complaint and granted in part and denied in part the motions related to class certification. He ordered the plaintiffs to file public and redacted versions of specified materials by April 12, 2024.
The detailed version
- Flodin v. Central Garden & Pet Company · No. 4:21-cv-01631
- Jon Tigar
- Apr. 8, 2024
Background
The plaintiffs filed motions seeking to keep certain materials under seal. One motion concerned materials filed with their opposition to the defendants’ request to file a third-party complaint. Three motions concerned materials filed with the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. One of those three was a correction to another filing because the plaintiffs had submitted public slip sheets instead of the confidential exhibits.
The defendants narrowed some of their requests after the court found that an earlier request was not sufficiently limited. The defendants did not submit a supporting statement for one of the class-certification sealing motions.
Legal standard
Because the materials were connected to motions more than indirectly related to the case’s merits, the defendants had to show “compelling reasons” for sealing them. The court explained that protecting nonpublic business information that could harm a party’s competitive position can be a compelling reason, but general statements that disclosure might cause commercial harm are not enough.
Ruling
The court found that nonpublic sales data, documents revealing nonpublic business strategies, and nonpublic product formulas could be filed under seal. It granted sealing for Exhibits 2, 3, 8, 13, 14, 15, 24, and 25 to the Declaration of Courtney Vasquez in Support of Class Certification, along with specified portions of the Vasquez Declaration, the Declaration of Colin B. Weir, and the plaintiffs’ class-certification motion.
The court denied sealing for the specific amount of avocado in the challenged products, references to that amount, and persin test results. It reasoned that the defendants had not provided testing or sufficiently specific evidence showing that disclosure of information about a single ingredient would harm their competitive position.
Disposition
The court denied the plaintiffs’ motion to file under seal material related to their opposition to the defendants’ motion for leave to file a third-party complaint. It granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ motions to file under seal material related to their motion for class certification.
By April 12, 2024, the plaintiffs were ordered to file a public version of their class-certification motion and supporting materials, updated redacted versions as needed, and a public unredacted version of their opposition to the third-party-complaint motion and supporting exhibits. They were also ordered to submit a flash drive containing Exhibits 5, 6, and 7 for the public record. A previously submitted flash drive containing Exhibits 14, 15, 24, and 25 was to remain under seal.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.