Wexler v. Hasbro, Inc.
- Valerie Caproni
- 1:20-cv-01100
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 6
In Wexler v. Hasbro, Inc., Judge Caproni granted in part and denied in part requests to seal court filings, requiring narrower redactions for deposition excerpts.
David Wexler and Hasbro, Inc. must revise the proposed treatment of the deposition excerpts, while the ruling also affects the public’s access to documents filed in the case.
What happened
In Wexler v. Hasbro, Inc., David Wexler and Hasbro jointly asked the court to seal or redact documents filed with summary-judgment papers. They relied partly on confidentiality designations under a protective order and cited sensitive business, financial, marketing, and negotiation information.
The court said documents filed with a pending motion are generally available to the public, and a protective order alone does not justify sealing them. It agreed that protecting the identified sensitive information justified sealing or redacting most of the requested material.
Judge Valerie Caproni granted in part and denied in part the requests at docket entries 45, 54, and 66. She denied the request to keep specified deposition excerpts entirely under seal and ordered the parties to refile them by February 25, 2022, with narrow redactions limited to the protected information; the clerk was directed to close the three motions.
The detailed version
- Wexler v. Hasbro, Inc. · No. 1:20-cv-01100
- Valerie Caproni
- Feb. 16, 2022
Background
David Wexler and Hasbro jointly requested permission to seal or redact documents filed in connection with Hasbro’s motion for summary judgment and Wexler’s opposition. The requests concerned docket entries 45, 54, and 66. The parties relied on confidentiality designations under the protective order and identified sensitive business and marketing strategies, information about negotiations and agreements with business counterparties, and non-public financial information. They also sought to keep certain deposition excerpts entirely under seal because they said the excerpts contained this information throughout.
Court’s analysis
The court held that the documents filed with the pending motion were judicial documents because they were relevant to the court’s work and useful in the judicial process. Those documents therefore carried a presumption of public access. The court explained that a confidentiality designation under a protective order, by itself, does not establish that sealing is appropriate. The parties nevertheless identified higher values—protecting sensitive business, negotiation, and financial information—that justified sealing or redacting most of the materials.
The court found that completely sealing the listed deposition excerpts was broader than necessary. It concluded that the parties had not narrowly tailored the proposed sealing to protect the identified interests and directed them to use redactions instead.
Ruling
Judge Valerie E. Caproni granted in part and denied in part the parties’ sealing requests at docket entries 45, 54, and 66. The majority of the requests were granted. The request to file the specified deposition excerpts completely under seal was denied. The parties were ordered to refile those excerpts by no later than February 25, 2022, with proposed redactions limited to text implicating the three identified protected interests. The court encouraged narrow redactions and reminded the parties to follow the court’s filing practices. The clerk was directed to close the open motions at docket entries 45, 54, and 66.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.