Eton Park Capital Management L.P. v. Argentine Republic

Background

The plaintiffs moved to seal their motion for an injunction and turnover, the accompanying documents, all other papers related to that motion, and the motion to seal itself. The order concerns filings in the Eton Park case and identifies related docket activity in Petersen Energía Inversora, S.A.U. v. Argentine Republic. The plaintiffs had obtained a $16.1 billion judgment against the Argentine Republic in September 2023 and sought to keep their enforcement strategy from public view.

Legal standard

The court explained that the public has a qualified right of access to judicial documents under the First Amendment and the common law. Because the documents contained the facts and legal arguments needed to adjudicate the turnover motion, they were used to determine the litigants’ substantive rights and therefore carried the strongest presumption of public access. To overcome that presumption, the plaintiffs had to show that sealing was necessary to protect an important interest and that sealing was narrowly tailored to that purpose.

Parties’ arguments

The plaintiffs argued that public disclosure would likely interfere with a possible commercial resolution of the judgment and could encourage other judgment creditors to bring competing enforcement actions. They also relied on a prior sealing order in Attestor Master Value Fund LP v. Republic of Argentina. The court noted that the plaintiffs acknowledged no commercial-resolution discussions were currently underway and that any future discussions were aspirational. It also found that the information about the Republic’s controlling interest in YPF S.A., the judgment, and the possibility of enforcement had already been publicly available for some time.

Ruling

The court held that the plaintiffs’ interests, although important, did not outweigh the strong presumption of public access. It concluded that a desire to preserve a competitive financial advantage was not traditionally private and that the claimed financial injury was sizeable but speculative. The court also found no inconsistency with the Attestor order because that order rested on sensitive financial information and negotiations, circumstances the court found absent here.

Judge Loretta A. Preska denied the plaintiffs’ motion to seal. She ordered the plaintiffs to file the turnover motion and accompanying documents on the public docket, and ordered the Argentine Republic to file its opposition to the sealing motion publicly, no later than April 22, 2024. The Clerk was directed to close the specified open motions and unseal specified docket entries in both civil cases.