George Steinmetz v. Shutterstock, Inc.
- Alvin Hellerstein
- 1:21-cv-07100
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Steinmetz v. Shutterstock, Judge Hellerstein granted the motion to seal as to identified personal items and denied it as to others.
Shutterstock and George Steinmetz were affected because the ruling determined which materials could be filed under seal or with redactions; the privacy of an unidentified third-party individual was also implicated.
What happened
In George Steinmetz v. Shutterstock, Inc., Shutterstock asked the court to seal or redact documents filed with its motion for summary judgment. Some documents had been labeled highly confidential by George Steinmetz, and another document contained a third party’s address, email address, and phone number.
Shutterstock argued that the proposed redactions were limited and protected confidential or private information. It also said the third party’s contact information was not relevant to the dispute.
Judge Hellerstein granted the motion as to the identified personal items and denied it as to the others because there was not enough justification for sealing them. The opinion text does not clearly identify every document covered by each part of the ruling.
The detailed version
- George Steinmetz v. Shutterstock, Inc. · No. 1:21-cv-07100
- Alvin Hellerstein
- Sept. 7, 2022
Background
Shutterstock, the defendant, filed a letter motion asking to seal or redact documents attached to declarations supporting its motion for summary judgment. The requested materials included documents that George Steinmetz, the plaintiff, had designated as “Highly Confidential” under a stipulated protective order. Shutterstock also sought to redact an address, email address, and telephone number belonging to a third-party individual.
Arguments
Shutterstock stated that it had consulted with Steinmetz’s counsel and had narrowed the request. It asked to file redacted versions of several documents identified by Bates numbers, along with unredacted versions under seal. For the third party’s contact information, Shutterstock argued that the information was not relevant to the case and that the proposed redactions were narrowly limited to protect privacy.
Ruling
The court granted the motion to seal as to the identified personal items. It denied the motion as to the other materials because the request lacked sufficient justification. The court cited the presumption that judicial records should be open to the public and the requirement that sealing be shown to be essential to overcome that presumption. Because the opinion text is partially garbled, it does not clearly specify which of the listed documents correspond to each part of the ruling.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.