Syntel Sterling Best Shores Mauritius Limited v. The Trizetto Group, Inc.
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:15-cv-00211
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Syntel Sterling v. TriZetto, Judge Schofield required a proposed order addressing requests to seal trial exhibits.
Syntel Sterling Best Shores Mauritius Limited and the other plaintiffs/counterclaim-defendants, The Trizetto Group and the other defendants/counterclaim-plaintiffs, and members of the public seeking access to the trial exhibits.
What happened
In Syntel Sterling Best Shores Mauritius Limited v. The Trizetto Group, Inc., the parties jointly renewed a request to seal certain trial exhibits. The court had previously asked them to submit a proposed joint sealing order, but they had not done so.
The court explained that trial exhibits admitted into evidence are court records because they were submitted to the jury. It also held that the public has a First Amendment right to access trial exhibits, subject to applicable limits, and a longstanding presumption of public access to evidence introduced at a public trial.
Judge Schofield ordered the parties to submit a proposed joint sealing order by June 25, 2021. The proposal had to address each exhibit in a two-column chart, separate Syntel’s requests from TriZetto’s and joint requests, and be filed publicly and sent to the court in Microsoft Word format.
The detailed version
- Syntel Sterling Best Shores Mauritius Limited v. The Trizetto Group, Inc. · No. 1:15-cv-00211
- Lorna Schofield
- June 11, 2021
Background The parties filed a joint renewed motion to seal certain trial exhibits. An earlier order had required them to submit a proposed joint sealing order, but they did not submit one.
Court’s analysis The court determined that admitted trial exhibits are judicial documents because they were submitted to the jury as part of its deliberations. Judicial documents are materials relevant to the court’s work and useful in the judicial process. The court also concluded that the First Amendment right of public access applies to trial exhibits. In reaching that conclusion, it relied on the history of public access to trial evidence and the importance of public access to monitoring the judicial process. The court noted a longstanding presumption favoring public inspection and copying of items admitted into evidence at a public trial.
Order The court ordered the parties to submit a proposed joint sealing order by June 25, 2021. The proposed order had to follow the format of the earlier order, list each relevant trial exhibit and the requested ruling in a two-column chart, and organize the requests into Syntel’s requests, TriZetto’s requests, and joint requests. The parties had to file the proposed order on the public docket and send it to the court by email in Microsoft Word format.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.