Dalla-Longa v. Magnetar Capital LLC
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:19-cv-11246
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Dalla-Longa v. Magnetar Capital LLC, Judge Schofield partly approved proposed redactions, rejected others, and ordered a revised petition filed.
Damian Dalla-Longa must re-file the petition with modified redactions; Magnetar Capital LLC’s proposed redactions were approved in part and denied in part.
What happened
Dalla-Longa v. Magnetar Capital LLC concerns proposed redactions to Damian Dalla-Longa’s petition asking the court to vacate an arbitration award. The court had ordered Magnetar Capital LLC to submit revised redactions and Dalla-Longa to respond.
Magnetar proposed revised redactions, and Dalla-Longa opposed some of them. The court stated that public access to court documents is not absolute and that protecting confidential business information can justify redactions.
Judge Lorna G. Schofield granted Magnetar’s proposed redactions in part and denied specific overly broad redactions. She ordered Dalla-Longa to re-file the petition by January 6, 2020, using the redactions as modified by the order.
The detailed version
- Dalla-Longa v. Magnetar Capital LLC · No. 1:19-cv-11246
- Lorna Schofield
- Jan. 2, 2020
Background
Damian Dalla-Longa filed a petition to vacate an arbitration award. The court had ordered Magnetar Capital LLC to provide revised proposed redactions by December 23, 2019, and Dalla-Longa to respond by December 30, 2019. Magnetar submitted revised redactions on December 23, and Dalla-Longa opposed some of them in a December 31 letter.
Court’s analysis
The court explained that court documents generally carry a common-law presumption of public access, but that access is not absolute. Courts must balance that presumption against competing considerations. The court found that, except for the redactions identified in the order, the proposed redactions were necessary to prevent unauthorized disclosure of confidential business information.
Ruling
The court granted Magnetar’s proposed redactions in part. It denied as overly broad the following redactions:
- All redactions in paragraph 13, except for the numerical percentage; - The employment position of the individual whose testimony is discussed in paragraph 14; - All redactions in paragraph 28, except for the names of employees; and - All redactions in paragraph 72, except for the text inside the parenthetical.
Judge Lorna G. Schofield ordered Dalla-Longa to re-file the petition to vacate the arbitration award by January 6, 2020, with redactions consistent with Magnetar’s proposals as modified by the order.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.