Clear Channel Outdoor, LLC v. City of New Rochelle
- Nelson Roman
- 7:20-cv-09296
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 28
In Clear Channel Outdoor v. City of New Rochelle, Judge Roman accepted a redacted filing and allowed defendants to submit portions under seal.
The order directly affects the City defendants’ ability to file confidential discovery-related material under seal and the public’s access to the redacted filing. It also concerns Clear Channel Outdoor, LLC because the confidential materials came from its discovery productions.
What happened
Clear Channel Outdoor, LLC sued the City of New Rochelle and two city officials over the removal of billboards along the I-95 corridor. The defendants filed objections to a magistrate judge’s recommendation concerning Clear Channel’s motion for partial summary judgment, but the materials provided here primarily concern the defendants’ request to seal confidential discovery information.
The defendants asked to file a memorandum containing references to documents that Clear Channel had designated confidential. They submitted both a public redacted version and an unredacted version for the court’s review.
Judge Roman accepted the redacted document as the public version of the filing and permitted the defendants to file portions of the memorandum under seal, while reserving the possibility of reconsidering that treatment if the withheld information later proved important to deciding the summary-judgment motion.
The detailed version
- Clear Channel Outdoor, LLC v. City of New Rochelle · No. 7:20-cv-09296
- Nelson Roman
- Sept. 26, 2022
What this filing concerns
The materials contain defendants’ objections to a report and recommendation by Magistrate Judge Andrew E. Krause concerning Clear Channel’s motion for partial summary judgment on Count IX. The defendants asked the district court to uphold the recommendation’s denial of Clear Channel’s motion based on laches, an equitable defense based on unreasonable delay, and to reject the motion on additional grounds. Those additional arguments concerned the wording of a settlement agreement and New Rochelle’s City Code, Clear Channel’s alleged course of conduct, equitable estoppel, and zoning-law restrictions on the billboards.
The defendants’ submission is not itself a merits decision on those objections. The court’s order in the provided text addresses the defendants’ request to file portions of their memorandum under seal.
Sealing request
The defendants stated that their memorandum referred to and quoted documents produced by Clear Channel during discovery that Clear Channel had designated as confidential. They filed a redacted version for public access and a separate unredacted version showing the proposed redactions.
Court’s action
Judge Nelson S. Roman accepted the redacted document at Electronic Case Filing No. 176 as the public version of the filing and permitted the defendants to file the specified portions of their memorandum under seal. The order states that the court could reconsider that treatment if the withheld information later proved integral to ruling on the partial-summary-judgment motion. The defendants were also directed to provide courtesy copies of the unredacted memorandum to chambers, and the clerk was directed to terminate the motion associated with Electronic Case Filing No. 176.
The provided text does not state the ultimate disposition of the defendants’ objections or Clear Channel’s underlying motion beyond recounting that Magistrate Judge Krause had recommended denying Clear Channel’s motion based on laches.
Read the full 28-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.