Nichols v. Noom Inc.
- Katharine Parker
- 1:20-cv-03677
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Nichols v. Noom Inc., Judge Parker addressed requests to redact personal, privileged, and sensitive business information from court filings.
The plaintiffs and proposed class, defendants Noom, Inc. and Artem Petakov, and people or entities whose personal, privileged, or sensitive business information appeared in the exhibits.
What happened
Nichols, et al. v. Noom, Inc., et al. involved requests concerning three exhibits submitted with plaintiffs’ pre-conference letter. The requested redactions covered personal identifying information, attorney-client communications, and Noom’s sensitive business information.
The parties asked to file unredacted versions under seal, with access limited to counsel of record. Plaintiffs described the emails as discovery materials and the proposed amended complaint as a nonoperative pleading; Noom identified revenue, user, and internal policy information as competitively sensitive.
Judge Katharine H. Parker entered the filing with a “SO ORDERED” notation on January 20, 2021. The opinion text does not separately state whether each sealing or redaction request was granted, but it records that neither side objected to the other’s sealing request.
The detailed version
- Nichols v. Noom Inc. · No. 1:20-cv-03677
- Katharine Parker
- Jan. 20, 2021
Background
Plaintiffs and the proposed class, together with defendants Noom, Inc. and Artem Petakov, jointly asked for permission to file three exhibits to plaintiffs’ pre-conference letter with redactions. The exhibits were: selected plaintiff emails, an email identified as the I. Meyer email, and plaintiffs’ redlined proposed Third Amended Class Action Complaint.
The parties proposed filing unredacted versions under seal with a viewing level limited to counsel of record. The filing states that Exhibit 1 also contained attorney-client communications that had been withheld from defendants during discovery.
Requested Redactions
Plaintiffs sought to redact personally identifying information from the exhibits, including plaintiffs’ email addresses and financial account information. They also sought to preserve the redactions for attorney-client communications in Exhibit 1. Plaintiffs argued that the emails were discovery materials and likely were not judicial documents subject to the public-access right. They further argued that, even if the public-access presumption applied, the information had little connection to the court’s work and the privacy interests supporting confidentiality outweighed that presumption.
Plaintiffs also sought redactions in Exhibit 3, a proposed amended complaint that was not the operative pleading. They described the requested redactions as approximately a dozen instances of personally identifying information.
Noom requested redaction of nonpublic information concerning its revenue and usage data and internal policy documents about its development of automatic renewal. Noom argued that the information was competitively sensitive, had been produced in discovery, and could cause competitive and reputational harm if disclosed. Noom also stated that the proposed redactions were narrowly tailored and that some related information had already been sealed in the case.
Court Action
The filing states that defendants did not object to plaintiffs’ request to file unredacted versions under seal and that plaintiffs did not object to defendants’ request concerning Exhibit 3. The document bears a “SO ORDERED” notation signed by Judge Katharine H. Parker and dated January 20, 2021.
The provided text does not contain a separate paragraph expressly stating that the requests were granted, denied, or granted in part and denied in part. Accordingly, the precise disposition of each individual sealing and redaction request is unclear from the text provided.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.