Chanel, Inc. v. The RealReal, Inc.
- Vernon Broderick
- 1:18-cv-10626
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Chanel v. The RealReal, Magistrate Judge Gorenstein granted requests to keep discovery filings sealed to protect sensitive business information.
Chanel, Inc. and The RealReal, Inc.; the order keeps specified discovery-related filings and attachments from public disclosure.
What happened
In Chanel, Inc. v. The RealReal, Inc., the parties asked the court to keep several discovery-related filings and attachments under seal and to retain redacted versions on the public docket.
The court assumed, without deciding, that the documents were judicial documents subject to a presumption of public access. It found that the presumption was weak for discovery disputes and that concerns about confidential, proprietary, and sensitive information regarding the companies’ internal operations supported sealing.
Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein granted the parties’ applications to seal the documents and related attachments. The order was dated March 9, 2023.
The detailed version
- Chanel, Inc. v. The RealReal, Inc. · No. 1:18-cv-10626
- Vernon Broderick
- Mar. 9, 2023
Background
The parties, either jointly or through plaintiff or defendant separately, asked the court to maintain the sealing of Docket Nos. 281, 282, 294, and 299. They also asked to keep redacted versions of those documents—Docket Nos. 283, 284, 295, and 298-1—on the docket and to allow related attachments to remain sealed. The documents had been filed in connection with discovery disputes.
Legal standard
The court applied the three-part standard it had described in a prior opinion. The parties argued that the materials were not judicial documents, meaning documents relevant to the judicial decision-making process. The court assumed for purposes of this order that they were judicial documents. That assumption meant a presumption of public access applied. The court explained, however, that the presumption is weak when documents concern discovery disputes.
Ruling
The court found that the defendant had identified valid reasons against public disclosure, including protecting confidential, proprietary, and sensitive business information about the internal operations of the two companies. Because the presumption of public access was weak in this setting and those concerns supported confidentiality, the court concluded that the parties had met their burden in favor of sealing.
The court granted the applications to seal at Docket Nos. 280, 293, 297, and 303. The order did not decide the underlying discovery disputes.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.