Gonzalez v. Penn Station Shoe Repair Inc.
- John Cronan
- 1:20-cv-01222
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 9
In Gonzalez v. Penn Station Shoe Repair, Judge Woods entered a stipulated protective order governing confidential discovery in the federal case.
The plaintiffs, defendants, their lawyers and litigation personnel, and other people who receive or have notice of confidential discovery material are bound by the order’s confidentiality, use, handling, and enforcement requirements.
What happened
In Gonzalez v. Penn Station Shoe Repair Inc., the parties asked the court to protect nonpublic and competitively sensitive information that might be exchanged during discovery.
The court approved their stipulated confidentiality agreement after finding good cause. The order limits who may receive designated confidential material, how it may be used, and how it must be handled in court filings and after the case ends.
Judge Gregory H. Woods issued the protective order. The order does not decide the parties’ underlying claims or determine that any particular material is actually confidential.
The detailed version
- Gonzalez v. Penn Station Shoe Repair Inc. · No. 1:20-cv-01222
- John Cronan
- Sept. 21, 2020
Background
The plaintiffs are Josefina Gonzalez, Edgar Fernando Velicela, Edgar Patricio Velicela, John Jairo Velicela, Marco Tulio Saldanha, Jose Armando Sambula, Jose Gino Desouza, Eduardo Fernando Macancela Chedraui, and Victor Manuel Disla. The defendants are Penn Station Shoe Repair, Inc. doing business as Drago Shoe Repair, 45th Street Park Avenue Shoe Repair Inc., and Vadim Khaimov, individually.
The parties, through their lawyers, requested a protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c). They said they might need to disclose nonpublic and competitively sensitive information during discovery. The court found good cause for an appropriately tailored confidentiality order covering the pretrial phase of the case.
Order
The court ordered the parties and other people subject to the order not to disclose discovery material designated as confidential except as the order permits. A producing party may designate material that it reasonably and in good faith believes includes previously undisclosed financial information, ownership or control information about a nonpublic company, business plans, product-development or marketing information, personal or intimate information, or another category later given confidential status by the court.
The order permits disclosure to specified recipients, including the parties, insurers, lawyers and their litigation staff, service providers, mediators or arbitrators who sign nondisclosure agreements, certain people identified in documents, potential witnesses and experts who sign nondisclosure agreements, deposition reporters, and the court. Recipients may use confidential material only to prosecute or defend this case and related appeals.
The order establishes procedures for marking confidential material, correcting an earlier failure to designate material, objecting to a confidentiality designation, and requesting additional limits such as attorneys’-eyes-only treatment. It also requires public redacted filings when confidential material is filed with the court and requires a separate application supporting any request to file the material under seal.
The order states that the court has not determined that any designated material is confidential and may decide later whether confidential treatment is appropriate. It warns that material introduced at trial is unlikely to remain sealed unless the legal standard for sealing is satisfied.
Within 60 days after the final disposition of the case, including appeals, recipients generally must return or destroy confidential material and certify that they kept no copies. Lawyers specifically retained for the case may keep archival copies of certain case files and work product, but those copies remain subject to the order. The order continues after the litigation ends, and the court retains jurisdiction to enforce it or impose contempt sanctions.
Disposition
Judge Gregory H. Woods so ordered the stipulated protective order. This procedural order governs discovery confidentiality and does not resolve the merits of the case.
Read the full 9-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.