Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:20-cv-10500
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
Adrian Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties: Judge Schofield denied Jules’s sealing request and set deadlines for briefing confirmation of an arbitration award.
Adrian Jules and the defendants, including Andre Balazs Properties, who must proceed with briefing on the defendants’ motion to confirm the arbitration award; the award document was also ordered unsealed.
What happened
In Adrian Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties, the parties told the court that an arbitrator had issued a final award favoring the defendants. Jules asked to file the award entirely under seal and to delay briefing on the defendants’ expected request to confirm it.
The court denied the sealing request because the award had already been publicly filed in California. It also ordered the parties to brief the defendants’ confirmation motion on set deadlines, with page limits for each filing.
Judge Lorna G. Schofield directed the defendants to file their motion by March 10, 2023, Jules to respond by March 31, and the defendants to reply by April 7. This order did not decide whether the award should be confirmed.
The detailed version
- Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties · No. 1:20-cv-10500
- Lorna Schofield
- Feb. 17, 2023
Background
The court had previously interpreted the parties’ arbitration agreement and stayed the case while arbitration proceeded before JAMS in California. The parties later reported that the arbitrator issued a final award on January 17, 2023, in favor of the defendants.
Jules then asked to file the final award entirely under seal. Jules also asked the court not to set a briefing schedule for the defendants’ expected motion to confirm the award while parallel proceedings in California were pending. The defendants opposed both requests.
Rulings
The court denied Jules’s motion to seal. It explained that the final award had already been publicly filed in California state-court litigation, so the court could not make the document private again after publication.
The court also ordered briefing on the defendants’ motion to confirm the arbitral award. The defendants had to file the motion by March 10, 2023, with a supporting memorandum of no more than 15 pages. Jules’s opposition was due March 31, 2023, and could not exceed 15 pages. The defendants could file a reply by April 7, 2023, limited to six pages.
The clerk was directed to close the motions listed at Docket Nos. 61, 70, 71, and 73, and to unseal the document at Docket No. 71. The order did not decide the defendants’ anticipated confirmation motion or otherwise determine whether the arbitration award should be confirmed.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.