Better Holdco, Inc. v. Beeline Loans, Inc.
- John Cronan
- 1:20-cv-08686
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Better Holdco v. Beeline, Judge Cronan denied Beeline’s request to seal an expert-report exhibit and ordered its public filing.
Beeline Loans, Inc., Better Holdco, Inc., and the defendants were affected; Exhibit C was ordered filed publicly on the court docket.
What happened
Better Holdco, Inc. v. Beeline Loans, Inc. concerns Beeline’s request to keep part of an expert report from public view in connection with a motion about proposed experts.
Beeline sought permission to file Exhibit C to a declaration under seal because Better Holdco had marked the exhibit as confidential discovery material. The exhibit contained pages 1, 5, and 9–10 of Better Holdco’s expert Ronald Schnell’s report.
After Better Holdco withdrew its confidentiality designations for those pages, Judge John P. Cronan denied Beeline’s request and ordered the defendants to file Exhibit C publicly on the court docket.
The detailed version
- Better Holdco, Inc. v. Beeline Loans, Inc. · No. 1:20-cv-08686
- John Cronan
- July 18, 2022
Background
Beeline Loans, Inc. asked for permission to file one document under seal, meaning not publicly available on the court docket. The request concerned Exhibit C to the declaration supporting Beeline’s opposition to Better Holdco, Inc.’s motion to strike or exclude Beeline’s proposed experts. Exhibit C was identified as pages 1, 5, and 9–10 of a report by Better Holdco’s expert, Ronald Schnell.
Better Holdco had previously designated those pages as confidential discovery material under the parties’ amended protective order. Beeline stated that it took no position on whether sealing was necessary and reserved the right to challenge Better Holdco’s confidentiality designation.
Court’s Ruling
The court noted the general presumption that judicial documents should be accessible to the public and recognized that the parties’ letters showed Exhibit C consisted of the specified pages of the Schnell Report. Better Holdco later informed the court that it was withdrawing its confidentiality designations for those pages.
Because the confidentiality designations had been withdrawn, the court denied Beeline’s request to file Exhibit C under seal. The court ordered the defendants to file Exhibit C publicly on the docket.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.