Tatintsian v. Vorotyntsev
- Gregory Woods
- 1:16-cv-07203
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Tatintsian v. Vorotyntsev, Judge Woods ordered public filing of unredacted summary-judgment papers after defendants did not seek sealing.
The order affected Gary Tatintsian, the defendants who had designated some materials as confidential, and public access to the summary-judgment filings.
What happened
In Tatintsian v. Vorotyntsev, the plaintiff temporarily filed exhibits and portions of his summary-judgment papers under seal because defendants had previously marked some discovery materials confidential. The plaintiff notified defendants that they had three days to ask the court to keep the materials sealed.
The defendants did not make that request. After the court later required the plaintiff to refile his summary-judgment motion, the plaintiff again filed the materials under seal and asked the court to allow unredacted versions to be filed publicly.
The court granted the application and ordered the unredacted motion and all exhibits filed on the public docket by April 29, 2022. Judge Gregory H. Woods also directed the Clerk to terminate the pending motion at docket number 379.
The detailed version
- Tatintsian v. Vorotyntsev · No. 1:16-cv-07203
- Gregory Woods
- Apr. 27, 2022
Background
Plaintiff Gary Tatintsian filed a motion for summary judgment and supporting materials. He temporarily placed several exhibits under seal and redacted quotations from them because defendants had designated at least some of the exhibits as confidential during discovery. Plaintiff notified defendants that they needed to make a timely application if they wanted the materials to remain sealed.
The court later deemed plaintiff's original summary-judgment motion withdrawn and directed him to refile it. When plaintiff refiled the motion on April 19, 2022, he again filed the exhibits under seal and redacted portions of the motion. As of April 27, 2022, no party had applied to keep the exhibits sealed.
Ruling
The court granted the application. It explained that a confidentiality agreement between litigants, by itself, does not overcome the presumption that judicial documents should be publicly accessible. The court directed the unredacted version of plaintiff's summary-judgment motion and all exhibits to be filed on the public docket no later than April 29, 2022. It also instructed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motion pending at docket number 379.
This order addressed sealing and public access to court filings; it did not decide the merits of the summary-judgment motion.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.