Riseandshine Corporation v. Pepsico, Inc.
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:21-cv-06324
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Riseandshine v. Pepsico, Judge Schofield granted the parties’ motion to seal redacted financial information in an opposition.
Riseandshine Corporation and Pepsico Inc. may file the opposition with specified financial information redacted. The ruling also limits the public’s access to those redacted details in that filing, while leaving sealing requests for summary-judgment materials or trial to be considered separately.
What happened
Riseandshine Corporation v. Pepsico Inc. involved requests to keep parts of the parties’ filings from public view. The filings concerned Pepsico’s anticipated motions challenging two of Riseandshine’s experts, and the proposed redactions covered financial information.
The court said the filings were judicial documents, but the public-access presumption was relatively weak. It found that narrowly redacting specific information about revenues, costs, and financial performance would protect confidential business information.
Judge Lorna G. Schofield granted the parties’ motion to file the opposition under seal. The ruling applies only to information in that opposition and does not automatically permit the same information to be sealed with a summary-judgment motion or at trial; the Clerk was directed to close the two motions.
The detailed version
- Riseandshine Corporation v. Pepsico, Inc. · No. 1:21-cv-06324
- Lorna Schofield
- Nov. 3, 2022
Background
Pepsico sought permission to file and brief motions challenging the admissibility of two of Riseandshine’s experts at the same time as its summary-judgment motion. Pepsico also sought to file its request under seal. Riseandshine opposed the request and separately sought to seal parts of its opposition.
An October 14, 2022, order denied Pepsico’s request to file the expert-evidence motions with its summary-judgment motion. That order also denied, while allowing a renewed request, Pepsico’s request to file its letter in redacted form. An October 24, 2022, order granted the renewed request to file Pepsico’s letter under seal and denied, while allowing a renewed request, Riseandshine’s request to file its opposition under seal. The parties then filed renewed motions concerning portions of the opposition.
Reasoning
The court applied the three-part test for sealing judicial documents. It considered whether the filing was subject to the presumed public right of access, how strong that presumption was, and whether competing interests justified restricting access. The court had previously determined that the letters relating to Pepsico’s anticipated expert-evidence motion, including the opposition, were judicial documents, but that the presumption of access was relatively weak.
The court explained that confidential business information may overcome the public-access presumption. The proposed redactions covered specific information about the parties’ revenues, costs, and financial performance. The court found those redactions narrowly tailored to protect confidential commercial information.
Ruling
The court granted the parties’ motion to file the opposition under seal. The order covers only redaction of information submitted in the opposition. It does not mean that the same information may automatically be filed under seal with Pepsico’s summary-judgment motion or at trial, where the presumption of public access is stronger. The Clerk of Court was directed to close the motions at Docket Numbers 372 and 373.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.