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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS

DALLAS DIVISION

JOSTENS INC.,

Plaintiff,

v.

RONALD A. HAARSMA and 

HERITAGE VINTAGE SPORTS 

AUCTIONS, INC.,

Defendants.

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Civil Action No. 3:22-CV -0796-X

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Before the Court is Defendant Ronald Haarsma’s motion to file under seal 

(Doc. 63) certain exhibits in his motion for continuance and for leave to file amended 

pleadings.1 Haarsma filed this motion pursuant to the protective order.2 Plaintiff 

Jostens Inc.’s response included a declaration and a line-by-line, page-by-page 

analysis to provide justification for granting Haarsma’s sealing motion.3 The Court 

has analyzed the proposed sealed documents line-by-line and page-by-page, weighing 

the public’s right of access against the interests favoring nondisclosure. After 

reviewing the motion, the Court GRANTS Haarsma’s sealing motion (Doc. 63). The 

Court ORDERS the parties to follow the Court’s instructions for filing, redacting, 

and sealing the various documents and the information that they contain. 

1 Doc. 62.

2 Doc. 23.

3 Doc. 70.

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I. Legal Standards

The Court takes very seriously its duty to protect the public’s access to judicial 

records.4 Transparency in judicial proceedings is a fundamental element of the rule 

of law—so fundamental that sealing and unsealing orders are immediately 

appealable under the collateral-order doctrine.5 The public’s right to access judicial 

records is independent from—and sometimes even adverse to—the parties’ interest.6 

That’s why the judge must serve as the representative of the people and, indeed, the 

First Amendment, in scrutinizing requests to seal.

Litigants may very well have a legitimate interest in confidential discovery 

secured by a protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c). However, 

“[t]hat a document qualifies for a protective order under Rule 26(c) for discovery says 

nothing about whether it should be sealed once it is placed in the judicial record.”7 

Here, the parties conducted discovery under a Rule 26(c) protective order and marked 

various documents “confidential.” But to sealing documents under seal on the judicial 

record involves a much more demanding standard.

“To decide whether something should be sealed, the court must undertake a 

document-by-document, line-by-line balancing of the public’s common law right of 

access against the interests favoring nondisclosure.”8 If the Court seals information, 

4 See Binh Hoa Le v. Exeter Fin. Corp., 990 F.3d 410, 418 (5th Cir. 2021).

5 June Med. Servs. v. Phillips, 22 F.4th 512, 519 (5th Cir. 2022).

6 Id.

7 Id. at 521.

8 Id. (cleaned up).

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it must give sufficient reasons to allow for appellate review.9 Finally, “[p]ublicly 

available information cannot be sealed.”10 

II. Analysis

Haarsma seeks to seal certain information cited throughout his motion for 

continuance and leave to file amended pleadings—specifically Jostens’s “[a]nswer to 

[i]nterrogatory No. 9” which included the name of the person who left “Jostens sample 

rings with another professional organization in February 2018.”11 Haarsma

disagrees with the designation of the information as “Attorneys’ Eyes Only 

Confidential,” and “defer[red] to Jostens to provide justification to this Court."12 The 

Court finds Jostens sufficiently did so.

First, Jostens provided a declaration of a person with personal knowledge 

explaining in detail why the information in Jostens’s answer to interrogatory No. 9 

should be redacted.13 Jostens then designated with specificity the very lines in its 

amended interrogatory it wants to redact,14 for the reason that it “provides details 

regarding the theft of the stolen sample ring that are not publicly known.”15 Next,

Jostens explained that the risk of disclosing the specific information in the answer

outweighs the public’s right to know because the information could be exploited by 

9 Binh Hoa Le, 990 F.3d at 419.

10 June Med. Servs., 22 F.4th at 520.

11 Doc. 63 at 2.

12 Id. 

13 Doc. 70-1 at 2.

14 Doc. 70 at 4.

15 Id.

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others to create counterfeit rings or to steal other rings. And last, Jostens 

acknowledged that the whole document need not be sealed, hence why it seeks the 

targeted redaction of just the lines requested. 

III. Conclusion

Given that the Court finds that Jostens met the heightened sealing standard

in its response to Haarsma’s sealing motion, the Court GRANTS Haarsma’s sealing 

motion (Doc. 63). As such, the Court ORDERS the bolded portions of Jostens’ answer 

to interrogatory No. 9 cited in Haarsma’s motion for continuance and leave to file 

amended pleadings (Doc. 62) and Haarsma’s appendix to his sealing motion (Doc. 63-

2 at 152) be redacted. The parties are ordered to comply with the Court’s instructions. 

The Court’s findings are the result of a page-by-page, line-by-line analysis. Such 

analysis “is not easy, but it is fundamental” to securing the public’s right of access to 

judicial records.16

IT IS SO ORDERED this 23rd day of May, 2024.

___________________________________

BRANTLEY STARR

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

16 June Med. Servs., 22 F.4th at 521.

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