American Achievement Corp. v. Jostens, Inc.

Background

The court considered three joint motions about continued sealing of documents filed in the case. The plaintiffs, collectively referred to as Balfour, and Jostens disputed the treatment of documents connected to Jostens’ motion to compel Balfour to identify its alleged trade secrets. They also addressed a list of Balfour’s lost customers and exhibits attached to Balfour’s Second Amended Complaint. Jostens took no position on the third motion.

Legal standard

The court explained that judicial records generally carry a common-law presumption of public access. The presumption is weaker for documents connected to discovery or other non-merits motions than for documents used in a decision on the merits. A party seeking continued sealing must provide a reason that outweighs the public’s interest in access. The court also noted that the sealing decision could change if the documents later play a material role in a merits decision or if Balfour cannot establish that the information has trade-secret value.

First motion

The court kept three Balfour business records under seal: a concession pricing agreement form, a presentation to sales representatives, and a customer spreadsheet. Although the court reviewed those records in connection with the motion to compel, its decision did not depend on their contents. Balfour presented a colorable argument that the records contained nonpublic, commercially sensitive information, and the court found that disclosure could harm Balfour’s ability to pursue its claims at this stage.

The court ordered Balfour’s initial and revised trade-secret-identification documents unsealed. It concluded that those documents described alleged trade secrets only at a high level and did not themselves contain trade secrets or other confidential information. The court found that the public interest in developing the law about adequate trade-secret identification outweighed the incidental commercial sensitivity of the descriptions.

The court also ordered Jostens’ memorandum supporting its motion to compel unsealed because its redactions cited the trade-secret-identification documents. For Balfour’s opposition memorandum, the court allowed the nonredacted version to remain under seal but required Balfour to file a new public version containing only redactions that referred to the business records the court kept sealed.

Second motion

The court kept under seal Balfour’s list of lost customers and the sales representatives assigned to those customers. It did not decide whether the list qualified as a trade secret. Instead, it found a risk that disclosure at that stage could harm Balfour and that the public interest in disclosure did not outweigh that risk.

Third motion

The court kept under seal the unredacted versions of exhibits consisting mostly of agreements between Balfour and independent sales representatives. The redactions concerned customer names in the representatives’ territories and related column headings. The court found that Balfour had presented a colorable argument that the information was commercially sensitive and that public access did not outweigh Balfour’s interest at that stage.

The court treated Exhibit 22, which was identical to the lost-customer list addressed in the second motion, the same way and kept it under seal.

Order

The court directed the clerk to unseal ECF Nos. 135, 138, and 138-1 28 days after the order unless a timely motion for further consideration was filed under Local Rule 5.6(d)(3). It directed the clerk to keep ECF Nos. 138-2, 138-3, 138-4, 148, 173, and 201-1 through 201-17 under seal. It directed Balfour to file by June 20, 2023, a redacted version of ECF No. 148 that redacted only text referring to documents otherwise kept under seal; otherwise, the court would order ECF No. 148 unsealed.