In re ACTOS Antitrust Litigation
- Ronnie Abrams
- 1:13-cv-09244
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In re ACTOS Antitrust Litigation: Magistrate Judge Aaron ordered defendants to further justify sealing documents by December 15, 2023.
The defendants must submit a further application supporting the requested sealing, and the order concerns public access to documents filed in the litigation.
What happened
In In re ACTOS Antitrust Litigation, the court considered three motions to seal documents filed in connection with two letter motions that it had recently decided.
The court ordered the defendants to submit another application explaining the basis for sealing by December 15, 2023. It noted that a confidentiality agreement between the parties alone does not overcome the public’s presumptive access to court documents, and it questioned whether attorney-client privilege supported sealing because the defendants had waived privilege in some relevant respects.
Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron issued the order on December 1, 2023. The order required a further application and did not state a final ruling on the motions to seal.
The detailed version
- In re ACTOS Antitrust Litigation · No. 1:13-cv-09244
- Ronnie Abrams
- Dec. 1, 2023
Background
The court addressed three motions to seal documents filed in connection with two letter motions that the court had recently decided. The order states that the matter relates to all actions in the consolidated litigation.
Order
The court ordered the defendants to make a further application explaining the basis for sealing no later than December 15, 2023. The order did not state that the motions to seal were granted or denied.
Court’s reasoning
The court cited the presumption that judicial documents should be available to the public. It stated that the existence of a confidentiality agreement between litigants, by itself, is not a valid reason to overcome that presumption. The court also recognized that protecting attorney-client privileged communications can sometimes justify sealing, but questioned whether privilege supported sealing here because the defendants had waived privilege in certain relevant respects.
Classification and effect
This is a procedural order concerning access to court documents, not a decision on the underlying antitrust claims. The defendants were required to provide additional support for their sealing request by the stated deadline.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.