Kewazinga Corp. v. Google LLC

Background

Google moved for summary judgment on December 23, 2022. Kewazinga filed a competing motion for summary judgment on February 3, 2023. Google also moved on February 9, 2023, to exclude portions of the testimony of Michele Riley, Kewazinga’s damages expert. In connection with those motions, the parties asked to file portions of the relevant record under seal.

Legal standard

The court applied a three-step test for sealing documents. First, it considered whether the documents were “judicial documents”—materials relevant to the court’s work and useful in deciding the case—and therefore subject to a presumed right of public access. Second, it assessed the strength of that presumption. Third, it balanced public access against competing interests, including privacy and the protection of confidential business information, proprietary information, and trade secrets. Sealing was permissible only if supported by specific findings showing that it was essential to protect a higher value and narrowly tailored to that purpose.

The court stated that documents filed with summary-judgment motions receive a strong presumption of public access because they are submitted in connection with potentially dispositive motions. Documents submitted with a motion to exclude expert testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 are also judicial documents, but the presumption of access is comparatively weaker because such motions do not themselves determine the parties’ substantive rights.

Ruling

The court found that the proposed redactions to the summary-judgment record were narrowly tailored and that the confidential and proprietary information outweighed the strong presumption of public access. It reached the same conclusion for the materials related to the expert-testimony motion, where the presumption was weaker. The court therefore ordered that the parties’ motions to file under seal were GRANTED. It also directed the Clerk of Court to close the motions at Dkt. Nos. 247, 266, 279, 286, 294, and 298. This order addressed sealing of filings; the excerpt does not state how the summary-judgment or expert-testimony motions themselves were resolved.