Capak v. Epps
- Katharine Parker
- 1:18-cv-04325
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Capak v. Epps, Judge Ronnie Abrams denied Tauheed Epps’s request to seal summary-judgment materials without prejudice.
Tauheed Epps’s request to keep portions of summary-judgment filings from public view was denied without prejudice; the court permitted narrower proposed redactions and otherwise required unredacted filings.
What happened
Capak v. Epps concerns an incident in which Rory Dorall Smith allegedly attacked and injured Richard J. Capak while acting as Tauheed Epps’s bodyguard.
Epps asked the court to keep portions of declarations, exhibits, a factual statement, and a legal memorandum filed with his summary-judgment motion from public view. He argued that some material contained business information or had been labeled confidential.
Judge Ronnie Abrams denied the sealing request without prejudice because Epps had not shown that the documents contained information strong enough to overcome the public’s right to access court records. The court allowed Epps to propose narrower redactions by January 24, 2020; otherwise, it ordered him to file unredacted documents by January 27, 2020.
The detailed version
- Capak v. Epps · No. 1:18-cv-04325
- Katharine Parker
- Jan. 14, 2020
Background
This case arises from an incident in which Defendant Rory Dorall Smith allegedly attacked and injured Plaintiff Richard J. Capak while Smith was acting as a bodyguard for Defendant Tauheed Epps, also known as 2 Chainz. Epps had filed a motion for summary judgment, which asks the court to decide whether a claim can proceed because there is no genuine dispute about the material facts.
In connection with that motion, Epps asked to file under seal portions of six sets of materials: his declaration; Smith’s declaration; two exhibits to Peter Raymond’s declaration; the Rule 56.1 Statement; and the memorandum supporting the summary-judgment motion. Epps asserted that his declaration contained detailed information about his business arrangements and transactions with non-parties, and that the other documents had been identified as confidential by other parties.
Court’s Analysis
The court applied the standard from Lugosch v. Pyramid Co. of Onondaga. Documents submitted for consideration on a summary-judgment motion are judicial documents, meaning that a strong presumption of public access applies under both the common law and the First Amendment.
The court found that Epps’s declaration did not appear to contain information about business arrangements or transactions with non-parties. The court also did not identify confidential information in Smith’s declaration, the Rule 56.1 Statement, the memorandum of law, or the two exhibits. The court explained that a designation of material as confidential under a discovery protective order does not by itself justify sealing the material after it becomes part of the court record.
The court further emphasized that the material Epps sought to seal concerned the relationship between Epps and Smith and the alleged incident between Capak and Smith—subjects at the heart of the litigation. The court also rejected reliance on decisions sealing celebrity deposition testimony because the excerpts here came from Capak’s and Smith’s depositions, not Epps’s deposition, and did not contain enough confidential information to overcome the presumption of public access.
Ruling
Judge Ronnie Abrams denied Epps’s request to seal the documents without prejudice. The court permitted Epps to submit more narrowly tailored proposed redactions under the Lugosch standard by January 24, 2020. If he did not do so, the court ordered him to file unredacted versions by January 27, 2020.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.