Mitura v. Finco Services, Inc.
- Valerie Caproni
- 1:23-cv-02879
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Mitura v. Finco Services, Judge Caproni denied without prejudice a request to keep an inadvertently filed redlined complaint sealed.
Plaintiff Isabelle Mitura, the defendants, and the third parties whose names and compensation information appeared in the inadvertently filed document.
What happened
In Mitura v. Finco Services, Inc., the plaintiff asked the court to keep a redlined amended complaint sealed after it was filed by mistake. The filing included names of third parties and information about their compensation that the parties had previously agreed should not appear in the complaint.
The plaintiff said the document would not affect the court’s consideration of pending motions and that sealing would protect the third parties’ privacy. The defendants did not oppose the request and had asked that the information be removed from the docket.
Judge Valerie Caproni denied the application without prejudice. She directed the plaintiff to resubmit the request by email to chambers by July 14, 2023, with opposing counsel copied and with a copy of the docket entry highlighting the portions the parties sought to keep sealed.
The detailed version
- Mitura v. Finco Services, Inc. · No. 1:23-cv-02879
- Valerie Caproni
- July 10, 2023
Background
Plaintiff Isabelle Mitura requested permission to keep Docket No. 24 sealed. According to the request, plaintiff’s counsel accidentally filed a redlined version of the amended complaint that had been compared against an unfiled version of the original complaint. That unfiled version contained the names of third parties and their compensation information, which the parties had previously agreed should not be included in the complaint. After the filing, plaintiff’s counsel contacted the Clerk of Court, and Docket No. 24 was temporarily sealed.
The Request
The plaintiff argued that the redlined complaint was inadvertently filed, would play no role in deciding the pending motion to compel or motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, and was only tangentially related to the litigation at that stage. The plaintiff also argued that sealing was appropriate to protect the privacy interests of the third parties. The defendants did not oppose the request and had asked plaintiff’s counsel to take steps to remove the information from the docket.
Ruling
The court denied the application without prejudice. The court directed the plaintiff to resubmit the request by email to chambers no later than July 14, 2023, with opposing counsel copied. The resubmission was required to attach a copy of Docket No. 24 with highlights showing the portions that were included by mistake and that the parties sought to keep sealed. The order did not decide whether the document would ultimately remain sealed.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.