Opinion ID: 434929
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Effect of the Protective Order and Seal

Text: 23 Continental claims that the protective order agreed to by the parties and entered by the district court on January 7, 1983, coupled with the May 13, 1983 order requiring production of the Report to plaintiffs' counsel and the court, renders the presumption of public access inapplicable to the Report. In this connection, we note that the May 13 order specifically provided that production would not defeat any claim of privilege applicable to the Report. But, Continental urges that the only relevant inquiry is whether good cause existed for initially placing the Report under seal. The district court presumably found such good cause when it held, in its May 12 order, that the Report must be produced but only under seal. 24 Initially, we question whether the prior orders of the district court are relevant to whether the Newspapers may have access to the Report. The initial protective order of January 12 was entered, by its terms, pursuant to Rule 26(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 26(c) allows a party, for good cause shown to seek protection from discovery. The conditions imposed on production of the Report in the May 13 order appear, from the order itself and from the transcript of proceedings, to relate only to the desire of the plaintiffs to discover the Report. Neither the January order, the May order, nor Rule 26(c) purports to control disclosure of material introduced as evidence in support of a motion. Continental does not claim that it was required, through discovery process, to introduce the report into evidence at the June 30 hearing. Continental did not refer to the protective order or seal when it offered the Report as evidence. Thus, the concerns that underlie Rule 26(c)--namely protection from involuntary disclosure by a party or person from whom discovery is sought--do not appear to be implicated by the district court order requiring public disclosure of the Report after it was introduced as evidence. 25 In addition, the May 13 order itself adds little support to Continental's claim that our only inquiry should be into whether good cause existed for a protective order prior to the Report's production to the plaintiffs and the district court. The May order, in fact, contains no finding of good cause for a protective order. And, as noted, it does not purport to protect the Report from public disclosure as evidence if it were introduced at the June 30 hearing. Rather, the May order purports only to restrict the use to which the plaintiffs might put the Report and it provides that production pursuant to the order does not waive any privilege associated with the Report. Continental has not contended that it sought or received any guidance from the district court on the consequences of offering the Report as evidence at the June 30 hearing. Thus the order of May 13 cannot be fairly read to produce the effect Continental seeks. Further, this is not a case in which the recipient of protected discovery material introduced it into evidence; in such a case the protective order might have a wholly different significance. 26 In addition to these considerations, the protective order itself and the order entered by Judge Grady to accompany the protective order further undercut Continental's argument for a good cause standard. Paragraph 10 of the protective order, Continental Appendix p. 52, provides, in pertinent part, [n]othing herein shall be construed as placing the burden [of justifying an order declassifying a document] on the party seeking to declassify any documents. While we recognize that the Newspapers are not parties to the litigation, and therefore not parties to the protective order, this provision indicates that Continental could only have understood from the outset that the protective order did not affect the legal standard applied to subsequent requests to make documents public. Further, Judge Grady's Order Explaining Limitations of Protective Order entered on January 7th to accompany the protective order provides, In short, the parties must understand that the protective order does not insulate the information from disclosure if disclosure is otherwise proper under applicable rules of law. (Emphasis added). 27 It appears, therefore, that good cause for the protective order, in the sense used by Continental, was never shown. Given the circumstances surrounding entry of the protective order, if Continental believed that the protective order would protect its interest in confidentiality of the Report, even after it introduced it into evidence at the June 30 hearing, that belief was unreasonable. 14 Cf. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. v. FTC, 710 F.2d at 1180 (confidentiality agreement between parties does not affect public's right of access to court documents). 28 Continental has not brought any case to our attention in which a court has applied the standard it seeks here. In fact, upon close analysis, use of the good cause standard Continental urges would apparently lead to quite unacceptable results. 15 Continental's argument would seemingly require us to keep material sealed even if good cause for unsealing existed, so long as the initial protective order had been properly entered. 16 District courts, under Continental's standard, in deciding whether to enter protective orders, would seemingly have to anticipate the possibility that, in the distant future, disclosure might be desirable, or required. This would cause major disruptions in the district courts' ability to exercise their discretionary powers over discovery and might make courts unwilling to enter protective orders in the first instance. Such a view of the effect of a protective order is too far-reaching for us to adopt. 29 Continental's contention that the presumption of access does not apply because the Report was admitted into evidence while under a protective order is similarly unavailing. As noted, the terms of the protective order and Judge Grady's explanatory order cast substantial doubt on any claim that the protective order should alter the legal standard for public disclosure of the material. Further, this case is in a different posture from the usual case in which access to sealed evidence has been denied. In most cases, the material sought has been produced to the court only under compulsion of a court order. Continental quotes Judge Friendly's statement that we entertain no doubt as to the constitutionality of a rule allowing a federal court to forbid the publicizing, in advance of trial, of information obtained by one party from another by use of the court's processes. International Products Corp. v. Koons, 325 F.2d 403, 407 (2d Cir.1963). While we recognize the persuasiveness of Judge Friendly's view, we fail to see its relevance to publicizing information voluntarily offered into evidence by a party whose possession of the information in no way depended on use of court process. 30 We do not think that United States v. Myers, 635 F.2d at 952 n. 4, requires a contrary conclusion. In Myers, journalists sought to copy videotapes which had been played in open court. The journalists had already been given transcripts of the audio portion of the tapes. The Second Circuit, while granting access to the tapes, noted that the presumption of access would not apply to evidence entered under seal because, with respect to that item of evidence, the session of court was not public. Id. Aside from the fact that these comments are pure dicta, there being no seal in Myers, it strains credulity to contend that the session of court in this case was not public with respect to the Report. The courtroom was open to the public, the witnesses repeatedly referred to the contents of the Report and excerpts from the Report were quoted by counsel in open court. The Second Circuit's further observation in Myers is therefore germane to the case at hand. 31 Once the evidence has become known to the members of the public, including representatives of the press, through their attendance at a public session of court, it would take the most extraordinary circumstance to justify restrictions on the opportunity of those not physically in attendance at the courtroom to see and hear the evidence, when it is in a form that readily permits sight and sound reproduction. 32 Id. at 952 (footnote reference omitted). Of course, the entire Report as a coherent whole was not publicly disclosed at the hearing here, but enough of it was disclosed to make the Second Circuit's comments relevant. Further, we recognize that Continental may have been under the impression that the protective order and its other efforts to keep the contents of the Report secret would shield the Report from the presumption of access, even when it was introduced into evidence and relied on to make a decision. But the limitations on the protective order and the selective public references to the contents of the Report at the hearing render that impression legally incorrect. 33