Securities and Exchange Commission v. Rayat
- Lewis Liman
- 1:21-cv-04777
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
Judge Liman denied SEC v. Rayat's motion to seal deposition excerpts and ordered the SEC to file them publicly.
The Securities and Exchange Commission must publicly file Exhibit A, and the deposition excerpts will be available on the public docket rather than remaining sealed.
What happened
In Securities and Exchange Commission v. Rayat, the Securities and Exchange Commission asked the court to keep confidential excerpts from Jeet Sindhu's deposition.
The SEC relied on a British Columbia court order requiring the deposition transcript to be treated as confidential and on this case's protective order.
Judge Lewis J. Liman denied the sealing motion, finding that neither basis overcame the public's right to access court documents, and ordered the SEC to file Exhibit A publicly by May 17, 2022.
The detailed version
- Securities and Exchange Commission v. Rayat · No. 1:21-cv-04777
- Lewis Liman
- May 12, 2022
Background
The Securities and Exchange Commission moved to seal Exhibit A to its May 3, 2022 filing. Exhibit A contained excerpts from the deposition of Jeet Sindhu, a Canadian resident. The deposition occurred under an order from the Supreme Court of British Columbia after this court requested international judicial assistance.
The SEC argued that two considerations justified sealing the exhibit despite the presumption that court records should be publicly accessible. First, the British Columbia order required the parties to treat the deposition transcript as confidential. Second, the SEC said Sindhu might have relied on this court's protective order, which allowed a party's counsel to designate a deposition transcript as confidential.
Court's reasoning
The court explained that exhibits filed in support of motions are judicial documents and therefore carry a presumption of public access. That presumption is weaker for documents filed with non-dispositive motions, such as the discovery motion involved here. Even under that lower standard, however, the court found that the SEC's reasons did not justify sealing.
The court read the British Columbia order as limiting disclosure of the transcript to what was necessary for the proceeding, not as requiring the parties to file the transcript under seal or requiring this court to keep it sealed. The court also concluded that Sindhu could not reasonably have relied on this court's protective order because the British Columbia order required him to appear and answer questions. In addition, the protective order warned that confidential designations did not create an entitlement to file information under seal and created no presumption that confidential discovery material would be filed under seal.
Ruling and effect
The motion to seal was denied. The court held that a protective order between the parties did not bind the court and that no countervailing interest outweighed the public-access presumption. The SEC was ordered to file Exhibit A on the public docket by May 17, 2022. The Clerk of Court was directed to close Docket No. 60.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.