Chen-Oster v. Goldman, Sachs & Co. LLC.
- Analisa Torres
- 1:10-cv-06950
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Chen-Oster v. Goldman, Sachs & Co., Judge Torres granted the parties’ request to keep two settlement documents under seal.
The parties to the Chen-Oster class action and the named plaintiffs whose non-class settlement terms were described; the two settlement materials remain under seal.
What happened
In Chen-Oster v. Goldman, Sachs & Co., the parties asked the court to keep two documents confidential in connection with a class-action settlement. The documents were a supplemental agreement containing a provision allowing defendants to withdraw if enough class members opted out, and a letter describing agreements with named plaintiffs about claims outside the class case.
The parties argued that these materials did not determine the class members’ legal rights and therefore were not entitled to a strong presumption of public access. They also argued that confidentiality would protect the settlement from manipulation and encourage settlements.
Judge Analisa Torres granted the request. The court held that, even if the documents were court records subject to public access, the parties showed that the interests supporting secrecy outweighed the public’s presumptive right to inspect them.
The detailed version
- Chen-Oster v. Goldman, Sachs & Co. LLC. · No. 1:10-cv-06950
- Analisa Torres
- July 31, 2023
Background
The parties asked the court to allow two materials to remain under seal: (1) a confidential supplemental agreement concerning the class settlement, including a provision allowing defendants to withdraw if a specified number of people opted out of the settlement class; and (2) a letter disclosing certain terms of agreements in principle between defendants and the named plaintiffs concerning settlement of non-class claims. The plaintiffs joined the request.
Arguments
The request argued that the materials were not judicial documents entitled to a strong presumption of public access because they were not relevant to the court’s performance of its judicial function and did not determine the litigants’ substantive legal rights. The parties also argued that confidentiality would help prevent manipulation of the settlement by people seeking to use the opt-out threshold to obtain individual settlements. They further argued that the confidentiality of the individual settlement terms served the public interest in encouraging efficient settlements.
Ruling
The court granted the request. It stated that, even if the materials were judicial documents subject to public access, the parties had met their burden of showing that the interests supporting filing the materials under seal outweighed the presumption of public access under Lugosch v. Pyramid Co. of Onondaga. The order did not provide further details about the documents’ terms.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.