Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-12-05141/USCOURTS-caDC-12-05141-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 850
Nature of Suit: Securities, Commodities, Exchange
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 10, 2012 Decided February 1, 2013 

No. 12-5141 

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, 

APPELLEE

v. 

AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP, 

APPELLANT

SUE REISINGER, 

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:04-cv-02070) 

Alexandra M. Walsh argued the cause for appellant. 

With her on the briefs was William H. Jeffress, Jr. 

J. Joshua Wheeler argued the cause and filed the brief for 

appellee Reisinger. 

Before: BROWN and KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

 Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN. 

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 BROWN, Circuit Judge: Compelled by a consent decree, 

American International Group, Inc. (“AIG”) promised to hire 

an independent consultant to evaluate a number of internal 

policies and past transactions. Appellee Sue Reisinger, a 

reporter for Corporate Counsel and American Lawyer

magazines, wants to know what the consultant found, but AIG 

has no interest in sharing the reports. The district court sided 

with Reisinger, concluding the reports are judicial records to 

which she has a common law right of access. We disagree and 

reverse. 

I 

 In 2004, after the Securities and Exchange Commission 

(“SEC”) charged AIG with securities violations, the parties 

entered into a consent decree, agnostic about AIG’s 

culpability, that enjoined future violation and required AIG to 

pay disgorgement to a victim restitution fund, establish a 

committee to review transactions prospectively, and retain an 

independent consultant to review transaction policies and 

procedures and to examine a number of AIG’s completed 

transactions. Of particular relevance to this appeal, the 

consent decree required the consultant to prepare reports 

documenting all findings and conclusions (“IC reports”). 

The consent decree was silent on the question of 

disclosure, but the parties subsequently filed a joint motion to 

“clarify” that the IC reports were to be confidential. The 

district court agreed, ordering that the reports “shall be 

disseminated only to those persons and entities and their 

agents, specified in this Consent,” or as permitted by the court 

“for good cause shown.” Since then, the district court has 

found good cause twice. First, it permitted disclosure to the 

Office of Thrift Supervision at the request of both parties, and 

second, it permitted disclosure to the House of 

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Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government 

Reform at the request of the SEC. 

 In 2011, Reisinger requested access to the IC reports, 

asserting both common law and First Amendment rights of 

access. The district court concluded—over the opposition of 

the SEC and AIG—Reisinger has a common law right of 

access and ordered public disclosure of redacted copies of the 

reports. AIG appealed. Our review is de novo. United States v. 

El-Sayegh, 131 F.3d 158, 160 (D.C. Cir. 1997). 

II 

 The public has a fundamental interest in “keeping a 

watchful eye on the workings of public agencies.” Wash. 

Legal Found. v. U.S. Sentencing Comm’n (“WLF”), 89 F.3d 

897, 905 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Courts have accordingly recognized a common law right to 

inspect and copy public records—that is, those “government 

document[s] created and kept for the purpose of 

memorializing or recording an official action, decision, 

statement, or other matter of legal significance, broadly 

conceived.” Id. This includes judicial records. Yet not all 

documents filed with courts are judicial records. Just as a 

document would not be a public record when it does not 

“eventuate in any official action or decision,” id., whether 

something is a judicial record depends on “the role it plays in 

the adjudicatory process.” El-Sayegh, 131 F.3d at 163. We 

have thus held that a withdrawn plea agreement the court 

never ruled on is not a judicial record subject to the common 

law right of access because the concept of a judicial record 

“assumes a judicial decision,” and with no such decision, 

there is “nothing judicial to record.” Id. at 162. Of course, 

even if a document is a record of the type subject to the 

common law right of access, the right is not absolute: it is 

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defeated when the government’s interest in secrecy outweighs 

the public’s interest in disclosure. WLF, 89 F.3d at 902. But 

we need not put the parties’ competing interests on the scales 

because we hold that the IC reports are neither judicial 

records nor public records. 

 

A 

 

The IC reports are not judicial records subject to the right 

of access because the district court made no decisions about 

them or that otherwise relied on them.1 A judicial decision is a 

function of the underlying record, El-Sayegh, 131 F.3d at 162, 

and if a document was never part of that record, it cannot 

have played any role in the adjudicatory process: though 

filing a document with the court is not sufficient to render the 

document a judicial record, it is very much a prerequisite. 

Reisinger’s argument that the IC reports “played a central role 

in the adjudication and the ongoing supervision of this case 

and the determination of the substantive legal rights of AIG 

and the SEC,” Appellee Br. at 12, misses the point. The 

court’s approval of the consent decree was surely a function 

of its terms (including the provision requiring IC reports), see, 

e.g., Frew ex rel. Frew v. Hawkins, 540 U.S. 431, 437 (2004) 

(“Consent decrees entered in federal court must be directed to 

protecting federal interests.”), but the reports’ contents do not 

record, explain, or justify the court’s decision in any way—

nor could they. They did not exist yet, and nothing in the 

 1

 The district court issued an order protecting the reports’ 

confidentiality and ruled below that Reisinger has a right of access 

to them, but neither decision is relevant to our analysis. See ElSayegh, 131 F.3d at 162 (refusing to find right of access merely 

because a court examined the documents in question to determine 

whether they might be filed under seal or because the court was 

called upon to determine whether they were subject to a right of 

access). 

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record suggests the district court cared a whit about the results 

of the independent consultant’s investigation as long as AIG 

in fact initiated the investigation. Disclosure of the reports 

would do nothing to further judicial accountability. See EEOC 

v. Nat’l Children’s Ctr., Inc., 98 F.3d 1406, 1408 (D.C. Cir. 

1996) (“[T]he courts are public institutions that best serve the 

public when they do their business openly and in full view.” 

(internal quotation marks omitted)). 

 Indeed, the independent consultant had no relationship 

with the court. The court did not select or supervise the 

consultant and had no authority to extend the consultant’s 

tenure or modify his authority. The consent decree gave the 

independent consultant no powers unique to individuals 

possessing judicial authority, nor did it require the consultant 

to file his reports with the court—and unlike the court officer 

in United States v. Amodeo, 44 F.3d 141 (2d Cir. 1995), who 

thought it “prudent” to file the reports with the court anyway, 

the independent consultant took no such initiative. In fact, the 

consent decree did not by its terms directly require anything 

from the independent consultant; it simply specified the work 

AIG would engage the independent consultant to perform. 

Presumably, AIG complied with the consent decree merely by 

hiring the independent consultant subject to the consent 

decree’s terms—regardless of whether the independent 

consultant in fact followed those terms, for example, by 

producing the required reports. 

This case is thus a far cry from Amodeo, invoked by both 

the district court and Reisinger. The consent decree in that 

case appointed a “Court Officer” authorized to exercise a 

number of judicial powers and whose very role depended on a 

relationship with the district court. See 44 F.3d at 143. In 

holding that the Court Officer’s reports were judicial records, 

the Second Circuit relied heavily on the Court Officer’s 

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judicial authority and the district court’s obligation, when 

addressing an application for enforcement of or relief from 

the consent decree, to consider the record of “all 

proceedings . . . to the date of the application.” Id. at 146. 

This case presents no such facts, a distinction the Second 

Circuit has suggested is dispositive. See Iridium India 

Telecom Ltd. v. Motorola, Inc., 165 F. App’x 878, 881 (2d 

Cir. 2005) (summary order). AIG concedes that if the district 

court is one day called upon to enforce the consent decree, 

and the IC reports’ contents are relevant, the reports may 

become judicial records. But that day has not yet arrived. 

Ultimately, it seems, Reisinger wants to evaluate the 

performance of the SEC and the independent consultant.2

 To 

that end, she filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 

request with the SEC before pursuing the IC reports in the 

district court, but the SEC—citing the district court’s 

seemingly exclusive jurisdiction over the reports—rebuffed 

her request. Unfortunately for Reisinger, the value of the 

reports for proper oversight of the Executive does not itself 

justify disclosure under the judicial records doctrine. See ElSayegh, 131 F.3d at 163. If the agency can appropriately 

refuse to disclose the reports under FOIA—we take no 

position on the matter—then so be it. See Ctr. for Nat’l Sec. 

Studies v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 331 F.3d 918, 937 (D.C. Cir. 

2003). 

B 

 Not surprisingly, Reisinger spends only two paragraphs 

defending her argument that the IC reports are public records. 

 2

 Reisinger pointed out to the district court that the 

independent consultant, James Cole, eventually became a U.S. 

deputy attorney general.

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Documents created by the independent consultant are not 

government documents. Nor do the IC reports memorialize an 

official matter of legal significance. Reisinger appears to 

argue that the reports became public documents when they 

were provided to the government, but such a transfer of 

possession is not itself sufficient to render them public 

records. See WLF, 89 F.3d at 905–06. 

III 

 The common law right of access predates the 

Constitution, El-Sayegh, 131 F.3d at 161, so it is not 

surprising the Framers enshrined analogous principles in the 

First Amendment, which “guarantees the press and the public 

access to aspects of court proceedings, including documents, 

‘if such access has historically been available, and serves an 

important function of monitoring prosecutorial or judicial 

misconduct,’” id. at 160 (quoting Wash. Post v. Robinson, 935 

F.2d 282, 288 (D.C. Cir. 1991)). Yet even assuming the First 

Amendment applies to the proceedings below, see Ctr. for 

Nat’l Sec. Studies, 331 F.3d at 935 (doubting whether the 

First Amendment right of access applies to anything beyond 

criminal judicial proceedings), for the reasons given above, 

the IC reports are not “aspects of court proceedings” and have 

no bearing on monitoring judicial conduct. 

IV 

 Because no common law or First Amendment right of 

access attaches to the IC reports, the district court’s disclosure 

order is 

Reversed. 

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