TOWN & COUNTRY LINEN CORP. and TOWN & COUNTRY HOLDINGS v. INGENIOUS DESIGNS LLC
TOWN & COUNTRY LINEN CORP. and TOWN & COUNTRY HOLDINGS, INC. v. INGENIOUS DESIGNS LLC
- Lewis Liman
- 1:18-cv-05075
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Town & Country Linen v. Ingenious Designs, Judge Liman directed narrower redactions instead of sealing exhibits entirely.
The plaintiffs, defendants, and third parties whose materials were designated confidential are affected by the order requiring narrower proposed redactions and a new sealing motion.
What happened
In Town & Country Linen Corp. and Town & Country Holdings, Inc. v. Ingenious Designs LLC, the plaintiffs asked to seal exhibits they planned to use with a motion to dismiss and/or strike the defendants’ amended answer. The exhibits included interrogatory responses and deposition excerpts that defendants or third parties had marked confidential.
The court said the exhibits should not be sealed in full. It explained that court filings are generally open to the public and that sealing must be limited to information that genuinely justifies protection. Confidentiality designations and agreements alone were not enough. The court identified pages containing legal arguments, citations, public information, signature pages, and certificates of service that did not appear to warrant sealing.
Judge Lewis J. Liman directed the parties to refile the exhibits with proposed redactions and to submit a new letter motion explaining the reasons for the redactions without including confidential information. The clerk was directed to close the plaintiffs’ letter motion at docket number 151.
The detailed version
- TOWN & COUNTRY LINEN CORP. and TOWN & COUNTRY HOLDINGS v. INGENIOUS DESIGNS LLC · No. 1:18-cv-05075
- Lewis Liman
- Mar. 30, 2020
Background
The plaintiffs submitted a letter motion seeking to seal exhibits supporting a forthcoming motion to dismiss and/or strike the defendants’ amended answer. The requested materials included seven exhibits with excerpts from objections and answers to interrogatories and three exhibits with deposition excerpts. Defendants and/or third parties had designated the exhibits confidential or highly confidential.
Court’s analysis
The court was not convinced that the exhibits should be sealed in full. Applying the standard from Lugosch v. Pyramid Co. of Onondaga, the court explained that sealing a court filing must be narrowly tailored to serve the interest that justifies secrecy and must account for the public’s presumptive right to access judicial documents. The parties’ agreement to confidentiality, or a confidentiality agreement between litigants, was not by itself sufficient to overcome that presumption.
The court identified portions that did not appear to contain a countervailing privacy interest supporting secrecy. Examples included generic interrogatory responses, legal arguments, case citations, quotations from public filings, patents, and published patent applications. The court also stated that signature pages and certificates of service should not be filed under seal and expressed doubt that the deposition exhibits contained any language requiring redaction. The court noted that information such as discussion of a particular trade secret could qualify for protection, but said that only those portions should be proposed for redaction rather than sealing an entire exhibit.
Disposition
The court ordered the parties to refile the exhibits with proposed redactions under Rule 2(G) of the court’s Individual Practices in Civil Cases. It also ordered them to file a new letter motion explaining why the exhibits should be filed in redacted form, rather than merely stating that the material had been designated confidential; the new letter motion was not to include confidential information. The clerk was respectfully directed to close the letter motion at docket number 151. The order does not expressly state that the letter motion was granted or denied. Judge Lewis J. Liman signed the order.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.