Lodging Solutions, LLC v. Miller
- Alison Nathan
- 1:19-cv-10806
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Lodging Solutions v. Miller, Judge Nathan granted the request to redact API customer names from a hearing transcript.
The ruling affects the public availability of the hearing transcript and the customer-name information identified as API's sensitive commercial information.
What happened
Lodging Solutions, LLC asked the Southern District of New York to redact a portion of a transcript from a hearing on its request for a temporary restraining order.
The requested redaction covered API customer names. The court found the information was sensitive commercial information and that the proposed redaction was narrowly tailored to protect against competitive disadvantage.
Judge Alison J. Nathan granted the motion under the public-access standard for court records, but did not decide whether the information was a trade secret. The court also noted that the submitted file did not actually contain the proposed redactions.
The detailed version
- Lodging Solutions, LLC v. Miller · No. 1:19-cv-10806
- Alison Nathan
- Jan. 16, 2020
Background
The plaintiff requested permission to redact part of line 5 on page 23 of the transcript from the November 22, 2019 hearing on its motion for a temporary restraining order. The requested redaction contained names of API customers. The plaintiff argued that the names were not material to the court's decision and constituted sensitive commercial information.
Legal standard
The court applied the Second Circuit's standard for sealing or redacting judicial documents. That standard requires considering whether the material is a judicial document, the strength of the public's right to access it, and countervailing interests such as privacy and protection of sensitive proprietary information. Any redaction must be narrowly tailored to protect an interest that outweighs the public's interest in access.
Ruling
The court granted the plaintiff's motion. It found that the request was narrowly tailored to protect competitive business information and that protection from the risk of competitive disadvantage outweighed the value of public access, making closure necessary. The court expressly did not decide whether the information qualified as a trade secret under federal or state law. The court further advised that the file submitted with the sealing motion, titled "Proposed redactions to Transcript of 19.11.22 hearing.pdf," did not actually contain any proposed redactions.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.