Desarrolladora La Ribera, S. De R.L. De C.V. v. Anderson
- Lewis Kaplan
- 1:24-cv-00067
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Desarrolladora La Ribera v. Anderson, Judge Moses granted DLR’s request to redact a nonparty potential customer’s name from its complaint.
DLR may redact the name of the nonparty potential customer from paragraph 108 of its First Amended Complaint. The customer’s identity remains shielded from the public in that filing, while the redacted and unredacted versions were described as available to the court and defendants.
What happened
Desarrolladora La Ribera, S. de R.L. de C.V. sued Steve Anderson and others, alleging that defendants harmed its reputation and drove away potential buyers at its Costa Palmas development in Mexico. DLR asked to hide the name of one potential customer mentioned in its amended complaint.
The court recognized that court filings are generally open to the public but found that hiding one name would not prevent the public from understanding the case or monitoring the court’s work. The customer was not a party, was not accused of wrongdoing, and had not asked to be involved. The court also found that a possible real-estate transaction and the identity of a potential buyer are not necessarily public information.
Judge Barbara Moses granted DLR’s motion to redact the potential customer’s name from paragraph 108 of the First Amended Complaint. The court did not reach DLR’s separate argument that disclosure would harm its competitive position.
The detailed version
- Desarrolladora La Ribera, S. De R.L. De C.V. v. Anderson · No. 1:24-cv-00067
- Lewis Kaplan
- May 6, 2024
Background
Desarrolladora La Ribera, S. de R.L. de C.V. (DLR) asserted claims against Steve Anderson, 5W Public Relations, LLC, Amit Raizada, and other defendants for alleged harm to DLR’s reputation and business. The claims included tortious interference with prospective business advantage, defamation, injurious falsehood, and civil conspiracy. DLR alleged that a potential customer had considered purchasing a $12.5 million residence at DLR’s Costa Palmas development but abandoned those discussions after reading allegedly defamatory material.
DLR filed a letter-motion asking to redact that potential customer’s name from one paragraph of its First Amended Complaint. DLR argued that the customer was not involved in the lawsuit and that disclosure could reveal information about the customer’s finances and purchasing preferences. DLR also argued that disclosure could harm its competitive standing. The defendants opposed the request, arguing that the customer’s identity was important to DLR’s tortious-interference claim and that real-estate purchase information is publicly available.
Court’s analysis
The court treated the First Amended Complaint as a judicial document, meaning a court filing relevant to the judicial process, and therefore recognized a presumption of public access. The court nevertheless found that the presumption was relatively weak here because DLR sought to redact only one name appearing once in a single paragraph of a 34-page pleading. The redaction would not keep the public from understanding the nature of DLR’s claims or from monitoring the court’s work.
The court further found that the proposed redaction was narrowly tailored to protect the legitimate privacy interests of an innocent nonparty. The potential customer was not affiliated with a party, was not accused of wrongdoing, and had not sought involvement in the litigation. The court distinguished between completed real-estate transactions, which may be matters of public record, and prospective transactions and the names of potential purchasers, which the court found are not necessarily public. The court did not reach DLR’s argument concerning its own competitive standing.
Disposition
The court GRANTED DLR’s motion to redact the potential customer’s name from paragraph 108 of the First Amended Complaint. The ruling concerned public access to the filing and did not decide the merits of DLR’s underlying claims.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.