The City of Philadelphia v. Bank of America Corporation
- Jesse Furman
- 1:19-cv-01608
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 8
In City of Philadelphia v. Bank of America, Judge Furman temporarily allowed redactions and sealing while the court reviews the underlying motions.
The parties to the case, third parties whose confidential information appears in the filings, and members of the public seeking access to those filings.
What happened
In The City of Philadelphia v. Bank of America Corporation, the plaintiffs asked to file class-certification reply papers and opposition papers concerning expert testimony with certain information redacted or sealed. The request was made on behalf of all parties, and no party opposed another party’s requested redactions or sealing.
The requested protection covered plaintiffs’ financial information and debt-management materials, defendants’ rate-setting and virtual-rate-demand-obligation information, and confidential business or personal information supplied by third parties. The parties said disclosure could cause competitive or privacy-related harm while still allowing broad public access through narrow redactions.
Judge Jesse Furman temporarily granted the sealing request. The court said it would assess whether to keep the materials sealed or redacted when deciding the underlying motions, and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate ECF No. 426.
The detailed version
- The City of Philadelphia v. Bank of America Corporation · No. 1:19-cv-01608
- Jesse Furman
- May 19, 2023
Background
The plaintiffs—the City of Philadelphia, the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, and the Board of Directors of the San Diego Association of Governments, acting as the San Diego County Regional Transportation Commission—asked for permission to file certain papers related to class certification and a motion to exclude expert testimony with redactions or under seal. The request covered the plaintiffs’ reply memorandum supporting class certification, the plaintiffs’ opposition to excluding expert testimony, and supporting declarations and exhibits. The request was made on behalf of all parties, and the letter states that no party opposed another party’s requests.
Materials at Issue
The plaintiffs sought protection for information about their entry into interest-rate swaps, the City of Philadelphia’s internal debt-management policy, and financial figures in an expert report concerning the alleged artificial inflation of variable-rate demand obligation rates and estimated class damages.
The defendants sought redactions concerning rate-setting methods, virtual-rate-demand-obligation inventory and inventory limits, comparisons with competitors, client-development and market-positioning strategies, remarketing fees, costs of carrying the obligations, and confidential government investigations. The plaintiffs also sought protection for confidential business and personal information of third parties that had been produced during discovery under subpoenas and a stipulated protective order.
Ruling
Judge Jesse Furman temporarily granted the motion to seal. The order’s introductory text is partially garbled in the supplied copy, but it states that the sealing request was granted temporarily. The court said it would assess whether to keep the materials sealed or redacted when deciding the underlying motions. The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate ECF No. 426.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.