City of Providence, Rhode Island v. Bats Global Markets, Inc.
- Jesse Furman
- 1:14-cv-02811
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In City of Providence v. Bats Global Markets, Judge Furman ordered filing of proposed redactions for Cowen’s confidential business information.
Cowen Execution Services, LLC, Cowen and Company, LLC, their affiliates, and the defendants were affected by the filing and redaction procedures. The order concerned confidential information attributed to Cowen.
What happened
City of Providence, Rhode Island v. Bats Global Markets, Inc. concerns Cowen’s request to keep confidential information redacted from a document filed in connection with a class-certification dispute. Cowen said the excerpt disclosed proprietary details about its anti-gaming technology and related business information.
Cowen argued that the information was competitively sensitive, had not been widely disclosed, and came from material produced under a confidentiality designation. It also noted that the class-certification motion had been denied as moot.
Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered Cowen to coordinate with the defendants and file a version of the document containing proposed redactions by April 28, 2022, while following the court’s procedures for filing redacted and unredacted copies. The order does not expressly state that the redactions were permanently approved.
The detailed version
- City of Providence, Rhode Island v. Bats Global Markets, Inc. · No. 1:14-cv-02811
- Jesse Furman
- Apr. 25, 2022
Background
Cowen Execution Services, LLC, Cowen and Company, LLC, and their affiliates were non-party broker-dealer subpoena recipients in the case. Cowen previously sought permission to keep certain confidential information under seal after the defendants included it in an opposition to the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification. The court had temporarily granted that request and reserved the question whether the material should remain sealed or be redacted.
The class-certification motion had since been denied as moot. Cowen renewed its request concerning an excerpt that it said contained proprietary, privileged, and confidential business information. According to Cowen, the excerpt described details about its anti-gaming technology and its use, information supplied to Wells Capital Management in response to a due-diligence request under a confidentiality obligation. Cowen said the information was not widely disseminated and was more detailed than its public marketing materials.
Legal standard and request
The letter described the court’s task as balancing the public’s presumptive right to inspect judicial documents against the privacy and business interests opposing disclosure. It also stated that courts give particular protection to non-parties’ privacy interests and may restrict access to filings containing business information that could harm a litigant’s competitive position.
Cowen asked that the excerpt remain under seal because it revealed competitively sensitive information, including details concerning trading strategies, objectives, and proprietary modeling assumptions. The opinion text does not state that the court finally granted or denied Cowen’s request to keep the excerpt sealed.
Order
Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered Cowen to coordinate with the defendants and file a version of the relevant document with proposed redactions no later than April 28, 2022. The order required Cowen and the defendants to follow Section 7 of the court’s individual rules, including publicly filing the proposed-redaction version and filing an unredacted version under seal with the proposed redactions identified. The court’s action was a procedural order concerning document sealing and redaction.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.