CBRE, Inc. v. The Pace Gallery of New York, Inc.
- Andrew Carter
- 1:17-cv-02452
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In CBRE, Inc. v. The Pace Gallery of New York, Inc., Judge Netburn denied without prejudice a request to seal expert-report exhibits.
CBRE, Inc., The Pace Gallery of New York, Inc., and the parties’ experts were affected by the ruling on whether the expert-report exhibits could be filed under seal.
What happened
In CBRE, Inc. v. The Pace Gallery of New York, Inc., the parties asked to file under seal lease agreements and charts from an expert’s report. The materials included information about Pace Gallery’s rent that Pace considered confidential.
The court said the parties had not explained why they were filing the expert materials without a related motion and that the materials should not be part of the record at that time. If the parties continued seeking to file them, the court denied the request to seal without prejudice because neither party showed factors sufficient to overcome the public’s presumed access to court documents.
Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn issued the order on January 14, 2020.
The detailed version
- CBRE, Inc. v. The Pace Gallery of New York, Inc. · No. 1:17-cv-02452
- Andrew Carter
- Jan. 14, 2020
Background
The parties jointly asked for permission to file under seal certain exhibits to their experts’ reports. The exhibits consisted of lease agreements and charts prepared by the plaintiff’s expert summarizing information in those agreements. The materials included information about Pace Gallery’s rent, which Pace considered confidential.
Ruling
The court stated that the parties had not explained the purpose of filing the expert materials without a relevant motion and that the court was unaware of a reason to do so. The court therefore said the materials should not be part of the record at that time.
The court further ruled that, if the parties continued seeking to file the documents on the record, the request to file them under seal was denied without prejudice. The court found that neither party had shown sufficient countervailing factors to overcome the presumption that judicial documents are publicly accessible. “Without prejudice” means the ruling did not bar a later request, although the opinion does not specify what a later request would need to contain.
Effect
The order addressed only the request to seal the exhibits. It did not decide the parties’ underlying dispute. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn signed the order.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.