Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Novartis Pharma AG
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:22-cv-04162
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Novartis, Judge McMahon denied reconsideration but granted limited redactions of arbitration-award royalty and sales information.
Novartis’s reconsideration request was denied, while its limited request to redact royalty and sales information was granted. The ruling also preserved public access to the remaining court-filed information concerning the parties’ arbitration dispute.
What happened
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Novartis Pharma AG concerned Novartis’s request to reconsider an earlier decision refusing to seal a final arbitration award. The earlier decision applied the presumption that court records are publicly accessible.
Novartis argued that reconsideration was needed because the earlier decision appeared to assume that Novartis had not complied with the award and that this caused Bristol-Myers Squibb to seek a court enforcement order. Novartis said it had not contested or failed to comply with the award and that Bristol-Myers Squibb had initiated the court proceeding.
The court denied reconsideration because Novartis did not show a change in controlling law, clear error, or relevant new evidence. Judge McMahon explained that the decision was based on the law governing access to judicial records and Novartis’s failure to show that the information was a trade secret or proprietary information. The court granted Novartis’s alternative request to redact royalty information and sales amounts from the award and related filings.
The detailed version
- Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Novartis Pharma AG · No. 1:22-cv-04162
- Colleen McMahon
- June 23, 2022
Background
Bristol-Myers Squibb sought a court order enforcing a final arbitration award involving Novartis. In an earlier decision, the court denied Novartis’s motion to seal the award. Novartis then moved for reconsideration of that decision.
Novartis argued that reconsideration was warranted because the earlier decision appeared to be based partly on an assumption that Novartis had not honored or complied with the arbitration award. Novartis provided additional factual background and asserted that it had never contested or failed to comply with the award, while Bristol-Myers Squibb had insisted on bringing the court proceeding.
Legal standard
The court stated that reconsideration is appropriate only when there has been an intervening change in controlling law, newly available evidence, or a need to correct a clear error or prevent a manifest injustice. A motion for reconsideration cannot be used simply to relitigate an issue already decided.
Court’s analysis
The court found that Novartis had not shown an intervening change in controlling law, clear error, or relevant new evidence. The court also explained that its earlier decision was not based on a finding that Novartis had failed to comply with the award. The earlier opinion had mentioned noncompliance only as one possible reason why a party might seek court enforcement after a private arbitration, and had expressly stated that the court did not know whether that was the reason Bristol-Myers Squibb sought confirmation.
Instead, the earlier decision was based on the law governing access to judicial records and Novartis’s failure to provide a convincing explanation why the information it wanted sealed—including discussion of Supreme Court precedent and the names of arbitration witnesses—qualified as trade-secret or proprietary information. The court stated that the reason Bristol-Myers Squibb sought an enforcement order did not change the presumption of public access to material filed in court. The parties’ confidentiality agreement also did not overcome that presumption, except for the limited redactions identified in the court’s earlier decision.
The court further stated that Novartis’s compliance with the award would not change the result. It noted that Novartis had asserted full compliance without admissible supporting evidence, although that assertion might be true and the parties acknowledged that some dispute remained unresolved privately. The court considered compliance irrelevant because the prevailing party in an arbitration has the right to seek a court judgment on the award.
Disposition
The court denied Novartis’s motion for reconsideration and directed the clerk to close the motion at Docket Number 14. The court granted Novartis’s alternative request to redact royalty information from specified pages of the award and information about sales amounts. If the final award is filed, the parties must make those limited redactions in the award and in related docket filings, while providing the court with unredacted courtesy copies.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.