United States of America v. McKesson Corporation
- Ronnie Abrams
- 1:15-cv-00903
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In United States of America v. McKesson Corporation, Judge Abrams denied McKesson’s request to permanently seal portions of the amended complaint.
McKesson Corporation, McKesson Specialty Distribution LLC, and McKesson Specialty Care Distribution Corporation, whose request to permanently seal portions of the second amended complaint was denied; the public’s access to those court filings was also affected.
What happened
In United States of America v. McKesson Corporation, McKesson asked the court to permanently hide portions of a second amended complaint and its appendices. The requested redactions concerned information from McKesson documents that had been treated as confidential during government and court-ordered discovery.
McKesson argued that the redactions protected proprietary business information, including internal sales strategies, training materials, business analyses, presentations, and emails. It also argued that the redactions were limited and would not interfere with public access to the allegations.
The court denied the application because the proposed redactions were not narrow enough and confidentiality labels alone did not overcome the public’s right to access court documents. Judge Abrams allowed McKesson to submit more narrowly tailored proposed redactions by July 8, 2022.
The detailed version
- United States of America v. McKesson Corporation · No. 1:15-cv-00903
- Ronnie Abrams
- June 24, 2022
Background
McKesson Corporation, McKesson Specialty Distribution LLC, and McKesson Specialty Care Distribution Corporation asked the court to permanently seal the unredacted version of the second amended complaint and to make permanent the redactions in the publicly filed version. The request followed the court’s earlier permission to file parts of the complaint provisionally under seal.
The complaint contained allegations based largely on internal McKesson documents. Some documents had been provided to the Department of Justice with confidentiality designations, and others had been produced during discovery under a protective order. McKesson said the proposed redactions covered proprietary commercial information, including internal business and sales strategies, executive presentations, sales tools, training programs, business modeling, customer communications, internal emails, and an outside consultant’s business analysis.
Court’s Analysis
The court applied the rule that court documents generally carry a presumption of public access. That presumption can be overcome only when sealing is necessary to protect a stronger interest and the proposed sealing is narrowly tailored to that purpose.
The court held that McKesson’s proposed redactions were not narrowly tailored. It also held that simply designating documents as confidential during discovery was not enough, by itself, to overcome the presumption of public access once the material became part of a court document. In addition, the court found that protecting McKesson’s internal business and sales strategies did not justify permanently sealing substantial portions of the complaint that described the core of the alleged wrongdoing.
Disposition
The application to permanently seal the second amended complaint was denied. The court permitted the defendants to file proposed redactions that were more narrowly tailored to their asserted interests by July 8, 2022. The opinion does not state that the court permanently unsealed every previously redacted portion; it addresses the denial of the requested permanent sealing and permits a narrower proposal.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.