Background

• Defendant Oscar Gruss & Son, Inc. sought the court's permission to file an 84-page agreement under seal in the litigation against plaintiffs Malherbe et al.
• The agreement involves the defendant and a foreign non-party and contains sensitive, confidential information, including share allocations and asset disclosures of non-parties.
• Defendant argued that only a single paragraph from the document is relevant to the case, and that the remainder contains non-parties' information with little, if any, public consequence.
• Plaintiffs opposed the motion, contending the document does not contain confidential information warranting sealing and that it should remain public.
• The document had been designated confidential under a protective order, and plaintiffs had not challenged that designation prior to the motion to seal.
• The court evaluated the parties' positions under the established legal presumption favoring public access to judicial documents and considered non-party privacy interests.

Issues

Key Cases Cited

• Lugosch v. Pyramid Co. of Onondaga, 435 F.3d 110 (2d Cir. 2006) (public access to judicial documents can be overcome by countervailing factors such as confidentiality)
• Nixon v. Warner Commc'ns, Inc., 435 U.S. 589 (1978) (the presumption of public access to court records can be outweighed by higher values like privacy)
• United States v. Amodeo, 71 F.3d 1044 (2d Cir. 1995) (privacy interests of innocent third parties weigh heavily in favor of sealing judicial documents)
• In re New York Times Co., 818 F.2d 110 (2d Cir. 1987) (privacy interests of non-parties is a significant factor in sealing determinations)
• Chigirinskiy v. Panchenkova, 319 F. Supp. 3d 718 (S.D.N.Y. 2018) (third-party privacy is a key consideration in sealing court filings)