We have received special permission to excerpt large portions. Here's disturbing evidence that big, fat, secretive insurance companies have more judicial clout than news media. Mealey Publications and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune want to know how 3M's suits against its insurers are going. The article then describes how even the trial judge's orders were censored by blobs of whiteout. The result being almost every word of testimony remained closed.
Insurance companies get every controversy they can closed to the public.
They claim the state's law prohibiting such steering inhibits their free speech. Stop us if you've already guessed that the insurers have asked the court to seal proceedings about this sacred Constitutional issue. Just for fun, Anderson tracked National Union Fire Insurance v. Gold Medal Insurance Company, a New York suit pitting two insurers against one another. I got wind of the case, and went to court to get some papers. When I sent someone a few weeks later to get more papers, though, he came back with nothing.