Fisher v. Miller
- Laura Swain
- 1:21-cv-07784
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Fisher v. Miller, Judge Swain denied sealing but granted limited access to the closed case and denied fee-free appeal status.
Jason D. Fisher and Jennifer Lighter are directly affected by the access restriction; the public cannot review the action electronically but may review it in person at the courthouse. The order also denies fee-free appeal status.
What happened
In Fisher v. Miller, the court considered a request from Jennifer Lighter to seal the case because she said the allegations were false, damaging, and harassing. The court had previously dismissed Jason D. Fisher’s action for failing to state a conspiracy claim, and the appeal was dismissed because it challenged a non-final order.
The court ruled that the pleadings were judicial documents with a strong presumption of public access. It said it could not determine whether the allegations were false and therefore could not give Lighter’s privacy interests enough weight to justify sealing the case.
The court denied the request to seal, but treated the request as also seeking to strike scandalous material under a federal court rule and granted that request. Judge Laura Taylor Swain limited electronic access to the closed case to the parties, denied fee-free appeal status, and directed the Clerk to mail Lighter’s letter to Fisher.
The detailed version
- Fisher v. Miller · No. 1:21-cv-07784
- Laura Swain
- Nov. 10, 2022
Background
The court had dismissed the action by order dated November 16, 2021, for failure to state a conspiracy claim and had allowed 30 days to file an amended complaint. The court also directed the Clerk of Court not to issue summonses. On December 13, 2021, Fisher filed a 150-page letter responding to that order, and the next day he filed a notice of appeal. The Second Circuit later dismissed the appeal because it lacked jurisdiction over an appeal from a non-final order.
The opinion says that Defendant Jennifer Lighter, identified as Fisher’s ex-wife, asked the court to seal the action. Lighter asserted that the complaint’s allegations were false, could harm her reputation, and were part of harassment. She also referred to an order of protection filed in the Westchester County Supreme Court. In response, the court temporarily restricted electronic access to the action to the parties.
Motion to Seal
The court explained that judicial documents generally carry a common-law presumption of public access. It applied the Second Circuit’s three-step analysis: determining whether the materials are judicial documents, assessing the strength of the public-access presumption, and balancing that presumption against interests such as privacy.
The court concluded that Fisher’s complaint and other pleadings were judicial documents because they directly affected the adjudication of the action. It held that the public-access presumption favored keeping them available for public view. The court also stated that it could not verify whether Fisher’s allegations were false. Because the earlier dismissal had occurred without deciding the truth of those allegations, the court could not determine that Lighter’s privacy interests outweighed the public interest. The court therefore denied Lighter’s request to place the action under seal.
Motion to Strike and Access Restriction
The court construed the request as also seeking relief under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f), which allows a court to strike scandalous material from a pleading. The court found that sealing the entire complaint was inappropriate and that redacting the voluminous filings would be impractical. It granted the motion to strike to the extent that remote electronic access to the closed case would be limited to the parties. Members of the public could still review the documents by personally visiting the courthouse. The court noted that the restriction did not reach third-party databases that had already obtained and published the documents electronically.
Conclusion
The court denied Defendant Lighter’s request to seal the action and granted the request construed as a Rule 12(f) motion to strike. It ordered that electronic access remain limited to the parties. The court also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free appeal status. Judge Laura Taylor Swain directed the Clerk to mail Lighter’s letter to Fisher.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.