Hong v. Sun
- Laura Swain
- 1:23-cv-05500
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 8
In Hong v. Sun, Judge Swain denied privacy requests but extended the pro se plaintiff’s deadline to pay fees or submit an application to proceed without prepaying them.
The order directly affects Kyong Mi, Hong’s ability to keep his identity and complaint private and gives him 30 days to pay the filing fee or submit an application to proceed without prepaying fees. The defendants and the public are affected by the ruling allowing continued public access to the case filings.
What happened
In Hong v. Sun, Kyong Mi, Hong, who lives in the Republic of Korea and is representing himself, sued Justin Sun, Tron Foundation Limited, and Bittorrent Foundation Ltd., alleging securities fraud.
Hong asked to make the case private, use a pseudonym, and seal the court documents after a journalist contacted him using information found through the public court-record system. The court found that his concerns did not outweigh the public’s right to access court proceedings and denied those requests, while allowing him to renew them later with appropriate justification.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain granted Hong 30 more days to either pay the $402 filing fee or submit an application to proceed without prepaying fees. The court said the complaint would be dismissed without prejudice if he did not comply, and denied fee-free status for any appeal from this order.
The detailed version
- Hong v. Sun · No. 1:23-cv-05500
- Laura Swain
- Sept. 11, 2023
Background
Kyong Mi, Hong, who resides in the Republic of Korea, filed this action without a lawyer against Justin Sun, Tron Foundation Limited, and Bittorrent Foundation Ltd. Hong alleges that the defendants violated his rights through securities fraud. The opinion also states that the action is related to an earlier case in the same court in which the Securities and Exchange Commission sued several of the same defendants.
The court had previously ordered Hong to either pay the $402 filing fee or submit an application to proceed without prepaying fees. Because that order was not transmitted to Hong until after the original deadline had expired, the court granted him an extension of 30 days from the date of this order.
Requests for anonymity and sealing
Hong asked the court to make the case private after a person claiming to be a journalist contacted him using contact information allegedly obtained from the public court-record system. The court treated his request as both a motion to proceed anonymously or under a pseudonym and a request to seal all documents in the case.
The court denied the motion to proceed anonymously or under a pseudonym. It explained that the allegations involved matters of public concern, Hong had not alleged facts showing a risk of retaliatory harm or unusual vulnerability, and he had waited more than nine weeks after filing a public complaint to seek anonymity. The court also noted that filing the action in federal court made his name part of the public record. The denial was without prejudice to renewal later with appropriate justification.
The court separately denied the motion to seal. It concluded that the complaint was a judicial document, meaning a court filing relevant to the judicial process, and that Hong had not shown that privacy risks or possible harm outweighed the public’s presumptive right of access. This denial was also without prejudice to renewal later with appropriate justification.
Filing deadline and appeal
Hong must, within 30 days of the order, either pay the filing fee or submit a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees. If he does neither, the complaint will be dismissed without prejudice. The court also certified that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free status for purposes of an appeal.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain therefore denied Hong’s requests to proceed anonymously or under a pseudonym and to proceed under seal, granted his extension to pay the filing fee or submit the fee-waiver application, and denied fee-free status for an appeal.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.