Kahle v. Cargill, Inc.
- Jed Rakoff
- 1:21-cv-08532
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Kahle v. Cargill, Judge Aaron provisionally granted three sealing motions and denied a fourth as moot.
The plaintiff and Cargill were affected by the provisional sealing rulings. Nonparty Corporación Coex, Inc. (Coex Panama) was affected by the requirement that it explain why continued sealing was necessary if its request remained the basis for redactions.
What happened
Kahle v. Cargill involved four requests to keep documents from public view while the parties prepared motions asking for partial summary judgment.
The court provisionally granted the requests at docket entries 212, 216, and 219. It denied the request at docket entry 206 as moot because later filings replaced the filings covered by that request.
Judge Stewart D. Aaron said the court would revisit the sealing requests when issuing its recommendation on the partial-summary-judgment motions. He also ordered Cargill to send the order to nonparty Corporación Coex, Inc., which would have to explain why continued secrecy was necessary if it still relied on its request.
The detailed version
- Kahle v. Cargill, Inc. · No. 1:21-cv-08532
- Jed Rakoff
- Mar. 12, 2024
What the court decided
The court ruled on four letter motions seeking to seal, or restrict public access to, documents. It PROVISIONALLY GRANTED IN PART the motions and DENIED IN PART AS MOOT them.
Rulings on the motions
The court provisionally granted the motions at ECF Nos. 212, 216, and 219. It said the sealing issues were best considered later, after the complete record was available in connection with the parties’ forthcoming motions for partial summary judgment. The court expected to address the requests again in its report and recommendation on those motions, unless the parties withdrew their requests to keep some or all of the filings sealed.
The court denied the motion at ECF No. 206 as moot. Cargill had later filed revised papers at ECF Nos. 213 and 214, which effectively replaced its earlier filings at ECF Nos. 207 and 208. Cargill’s later sealing motion at ECF No. 212 also withdrew most of the earlier redactions, leaving only two dollar amounts and part of one sentence.
Nonparty request
Cargill’s motion at ECF No. 212 said that Cargill had made redactions at the request of nonparty Corporación Coex, Inc., referred to as “Coex Panama.” The court stated that, if Cargill continued to rely on Coex Panama’s request, Coex Panama itself had to show why sealing was necessary and appropriate under the Second Circuit’s decision in Lugosch v. Pyramid Co. of Onondaga. The court ordered Cargill to transmit the order to Coex Panama or its properly designated agent so that Coex Panama would receive notice.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.