Serifos Maritime Corporation v. Glencore Singapore Pte Ltd

Background

Glencore asked the court to seal Serifos’s proposed Second Amended Complaint. Serifos separately asked to seal its motion to supplement that complaint and the supplemented complaint, citing the parties’ protective order. The sealing requests concerned documents filed at Docket Nos. 71, 83, and 90.

Court’s analysis

The court explained that court documents are generally presumed accessible to the public, although that presumption can be outweighed by competing interests. The court gave substantial weight to the privacy interests of innocent third parties and relied on its earlier sealing order in the same action to conclude that redacting third-party customer names and identifying information was appropriate.

Glencore also argued that communications between it and the Maritime Port Authority of Singapore should be sealed as communications between an entity and its regulator. The court rejected that request. It found that Glencore had not shown that the communications carried a presumption of confidentiality, including because such information might otherwise be available through public-records laws. The court also found that Glencore had not shown that the information was commercially sensitive.

Ruling

Judge Lorna G. Schofield ordered that Glencore’s letter motion at Docket No. 70 was GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. In public filings, the parties could redact the names and identifying information of third-party customers, but they could not redact the substance of communications between Glencore and its regulators. Serifos was ordered to file public versions of the documents at Docket Nos. 71, 83, and 90, with appropriate redactions, by February 16, 2024. The Clerk of Court was directed to keep those documents under seal and close the motions at Docket Nos. 70 and 81.