Liberty Insurance Underwriters Inc. v. Epiq Ediscovery Solutions, Inc.
- Lewis Liman
- 1:20-cv-10025
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Liberty Insurance v. Epiq, Judge Liman denied without prejudice a request to seal the entire agreement, allowing a narrower redaction proposal.
Liberty Insurance Underwriters, Inc. must pursue a narrower, redaction-based request if it wants to keep portions of the agreement from public view; Epiq may be consulted about what information is confidential or sensitive.
What happened
Liberty Insurance Underwriters Inc. asked to seal the entire Legal Solutions Services Agreement involving Epiq Ediscovery Solutions, Inc. and other insurers. Liberty argued that the agreement might contain proprietary information and had been marked confidential during earlier discovery.
The court said confidentiality between litigants alone does not overcome the public’s right to access court filings. After reviewing the agreement, the court found that it appeared to include extensive information that was not confidential or sensitive, including standard terms and the dispute-resolution provision relevant to Liberty’s claims.
Judge Lewis J. Liman denied the sealing motion without prejudice. He allowed Liberty to file a new request proposing limited redactions after consulting Epiq, and deferred making the agreement public until December 5, 2020.
The detailed version
- Liberty Insurance Underwriters Inc. v. Epiq Ediscovery Solutions, Inc. · No. 1:20-cv-10025
- Lewis Liman
- Dec. 1, 2020
Background
Liberty Insurance Underwriters, Inc. asked the court to seal the entire Legal Solutions Services Agreement between Liberty, Epiq Ediscovery Solutions, Inc., and other insurers. Liberty asserted that the agreement contained information about Epiq’s fees and services that Epiq might consider proprietary and that the information had no bearing on the case. Liberty also noted that the agreement had been marked confidential when produced in discovery in earlier litigation related to this matter.
Legal standard
The court applied the public-access standard for judicial documents. Under that standard, sealing must be narrowly tailored to serve a legitimate purpose and must account for the presumption that court filings should be available to the public. Privacy interests and business information that could harm a party’s competitive position may sometimes outweigh that presumption. But a confidentiality agreement between litigants, by itself, is not enough. Documents filed with the court and relevant to the court’s work are treated differently from materials exchanged privately during discovery.
Court’s analysis
The court found that Liberty had not identified which portions of the agreement were proprietary and had not provided Epiq’s position about what information was confidential. The court’s own review indicated that the agreement appeared to contain substantial information that was not confidential or sensitive, including Epiq’s standard terms, the parties responsible for paying Epiq’s invoices, and the dispute-resolution mechanism on which Liberty asked the court to rely.
The court stated that the parties could propose redactions for information that was truly confidential or sensitive. It emphasized that judicial documents generally should not be sealed in their entirety unless that is necessary.
Disposition
The court denied without prejudice Liberty’s motion to seal the entire agreement. Liberty could submit a copy with proposed redactions limited to information that was genuinely confidential or sensitive and supported by the governing public-access standard. Liberty could make that renewed motion by December 3, 2020, at 12:00 p.m., after consulting with Epiq. The court deferred making the agreement public until December 5, 2020, so it could consider any narrower sealing motion. The Clerk was directed to close the docket entry for the motion.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.