Opinion ID: 4512152
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Weight of Presumptive Right of Access

Text: Turning to the second step: The general and deeply rooted rule is that the presumptive right of access is afforded “strong weight” when applied to documents that play a central role in “determining litigants’ substantive rights—conduct at the heart of Article III.” Amodeo II, 71 F.3d at 1049. As this Court has observed many times, 13 such access is critical as it enables the public to monitor the actions of the courts and juries to ensure “a measure of accountability” and bolster “confidence in the administration of justice.” See id. at 1048. See generally Globe Newspaper Co. v. Superior Court, 457 U.S. 596, 610 (1982) (“[A] presumption of openness inheres in the very nature of a criminal trial under our system of justice.”); Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 573 (1980) (plurality opinion) (explaining that right of access “contributes to public understanding of the rule of law and to comprehension of the functioning of the entire criminal justice system”). The presumption of access is thus fundamental and not casually overcome. The excerpts of Hack’s video deposition that were played for the jury gave important, even crucial, corroboration for Mirlis’s account of sexual assault by Greer while Mirlis was a student at the Yeshiva. His demeanor in so testifying over the several hours played to the jury surely conveyed information that bore on the jury’s assessment of his account. That those excerpts played a central role in the jury’s determination of Mirlis’s and Greer’s substantive rights was implicitly confirmed by the jury’s request, which the District Court granted, to review portions of that video during their deliberations. Hack does not argue otherwise on appeal. The court thus correctly accorded a strong presumption of public access to the excerpts of Hack’s video deposition. C. Identification and Balancing of Countervailing Interests At the third step, however, we identify error in the District Court’s analysis. Foremost among the competing concerns that a court weighing disclosure must consider is “the privacy interest of the person resisting disclosure.” Amodeo II, 71 F.3d at 1050 (reiterating that “the privacy interests of innocent third parties . . . should weigh 14 heavily in a court’s balancing equation”). Such interests establish a “venerable common law exception to the presumption of access.” Id. at 1051. In determining the proper weight to accord an asserted privacy interest, a court should consider both “the degree to which the subject matter is traditionally considered private rather than public,” as well as “[t]he nature and degree of the injury” to which the party resisting disclosure would be subjected were the privacy interest not protected. Id. The latter inquiry entails “consideration not only of the sensitivity of the information and the subject but also of how the person seeking access intends to use the information.” Id. As further described below, we conclude that the District Court erred by failing to address and accord weight to Dressler’s motives in seeking to obtain the video deposition and his intentions with respect to that video, and to the injury to Hack—as a minor victim of sexual abuse—that disclosure of the video would inflict, even after the substance of Hack’s testimony became public at trial. Although the court seemed to consider its decision granting Dressler access to be dictated by our 1987 decision in CBS, in this reading it erred: Unlike in CBS, Mirlis’s civil litigation did not involve a crime of national importance; the core information it conveyed was already public and had been publicized; the video recording at issue was of a highly sensitive and personal nature; and—perhaps most relevantly—the Internet’s rise over the last 30 years has had tremendous implications for the ease and immediacy of access to videos, as well as the permanence of those videos, increasing the potential for needless emotional harm to minor victims of sexual assault who seek to avoid being victimized even further. See, e.g., Paroline v. United States, 572 U.S. 434, 440 (2014) (discussing how the Internet can create a “permanent record” of abuse and “memorializ[e] the sexual assault and other sexual exploitation of children”). 15
In January 2018, the District Court heard argument on Dressler’s request to release for copying the entire video of Hack’s deposition and certain other materials.9 In particular, this was a request to enable Dressler himself to copy the video, as no other person or entity had sought to do so. In his letter to the District Court seeking access, Dressler expressed condemnation for Greer’s acts of abuse and personal disdain for what he saw as Greer’s attempts to protect his (Greer’s) assets from collection of the $21.7 million judgment that was entered in Mirlis’s favor. Dressler further advised the court that Greer had filed, but not pursued, a defamation suit against Dressler. At the court’s hearing, Dressler affirmed his intention to post the video on his blog or in “some other place where [the video] would be available to anyone who has the internet.” App’x 449. During argument, Greer’s attorney asserted that Dressler was motivated to publicize the video by his desire to prejudice Greer in any future criminal proceedings. The District Court rejected Greer’s stated concern about Dressler’s motives as irrelevant, based on its understanding that our Court “has made clear that [Dressler’s] motivations are beside the point in terms of the First Amendment and presumption of access issues.” Id. at 459. The court’s refusal to consider Dressler’s motives in obtaining the video and intentions for use of the video if he did obtain it rests on a mistaken overreading of our precedent. Although (as noted above) our Court has commented that the motive of a person seeking access to judicial documents is “irrelevant to defining the weight accorded 9Dressler also requested that Greer’s and the Yeshiva’s “financial documents, deposition(s) and related financial information obtained during post judgment discovery be made publicly available.” Hack App’x 66. The resolution of that request is not a subject of this appeal. 16 the presumption of access,” Amodeo II, 71 F.3d at 1050 (emphasis added), we have never held that motive has no bearing on the broader task of balancing that presumption against considerations that counsel against disclosure. On the contrary, we have explained that courts should consider personal motives (including an applicant’s desire to pursue an “individual vendetta”) at the third, balancing step of the inquiry, in connection with any asserted privacy interests, “based on an anticipated injury as a result of disclosure.” Id. We have instructed courts that weighing “[t]he nature and degree of injury” requires “consideration not only of the sensitivity of the information and the subject but also of how the person seeking access intends to use the information.” Id. at 1051 (emphasis added). This information is relevant particularly when an individual, and not a news media organization, seeks copying access to sensitive information: As we cautioned in Amodeo II, personal vendettas “need not be aided” by the court. Id. Our reasoning in Amodeo II aligns closely with the Supreme Court’s observation in Nixon that courts may on occasion deny public access to judicial documents to ensure that judicial records do not “become a vehicle for improper purposes.” Nixon, 435 U.S. at 598. The Nixon Court expressed particular concern about protecting from purely prurient interest the display or disclosure of otherwise embarrassing private or familial information obtained through the courts. See id. at 601. It explained that “the common‐ law right of inspection,” although undoubtedly powerful and never lightly subordinated, must give way where records are sought merely “to gratify private spite or promote public scandal through the publication of the painful and sometimes disgusting details” of cases. Id. at 598; accord Amodeo II, 71 F.3d at 1051 (“Courts have long declined to allow public access simply to cater to a morbid craving for that which is sensational and impure.”). 17 This concern is amplified where, as here, a video recording involves primarily conduct that is not of national or statewide importance and where the video is not of the criminal acts themselves, but of testimony regarding those acts. This case thus stands in sharp contrast, for example, to In re NBC, where we affirmed a district court’s decision to allow “three major television networks to copy and televise all videotapes admitted into evidence” in the nationally publicized ABSCAM criminal prosecutions, where those videos showed “some of the dealings between the undercover operatives and the four appellants, notably the acceptance by [one] Congressman . . . of $50,000 cash and his demand of an additional $35,000.” 635 F.2d 945, 947 (2d Cir. 1980). Thus believing itself bound to ignore them, the District Court disregarded the ample evidence of Dressler’s unsavory motives with respect to Greer for seeking access to Hack’s video testimony regarding Greer’s predatory intimacy with him as a young person. Dressler’s blog also evinces his impure motives with respect to Hack—a non‐ party who, we note again, was primarily a victim of the defendant in, and not even a party to, the underlying litigation. True, Dressler’s letter to the court requesting access to, among other items, the video deposition expresses animus primarily toward Greer, not Hack.10 But to take that letter in isolation misses the forest for a tree: The blog on which Dressler announced that he planned to post Hack’s video deposition contains now, and contained at the time of the District Court’s decision, numerous postings— many of them published before the District Court’s hearing on Dressler’s request for 10Dressler made only four references to Hack in his letter, and those arose in the context of discussing his request to copy the video of Hack’s full deposition. 18 public access to Hack’s video deposition. Those postings are dedicated to, and demonstrate considerable personal hostility toward, Hack, not just Greer.11 Dressler’s posts reveal at least his willingness, and as plausibly his desire, to publicize and try to draw attention to personal details of Hack’s life—including the location of Hack’s place of work and his home address—apparently with the intent to humiliate and harass him. His words and actions provide a legitimate basis for Hack’s concern that, by making a recording of Hack’s deposition available in whole or in part to Dressler, never mind to the public more generally, the District Court could be allowing its order to become “a vehicle for improper purposes.” Nixon, 435 U.S. at 598. We therefore conclude that the District Court erred in dismissing as irrelevant, at the balancing stage of its analysis, Dressler’s motivations, including those suggesting a probability that he was pursuing not the public interest, but personal vendettas. 11In one such post, for example, Dressler describes, in significant detail, Hack’s purchase of a new home, refers to Greer as Hack’s “sugar daddy” and “side piece,” and discusses each of the men’s wives. Lawrence Dressler, Avi Hack Describes His New “Dream” House, Larry Noodles (Feb. 28, 2017), https://larrynoodles.com/avi‐hack‐describes‐his‐new‐dream‐house/ (last visited Jan. 22, 2020); see also Lawrence Dressler, Avi Hack Closes on Providence McMansion, Larry Noodles (Feb. 20, 2017), https://larrynoodles.com/avi‐hack‐closes‐on‐providence‐mcmansion/ (last visited Jan. 22, 2020). Although these 2017 blog posts were not brought to the attention of the District Court, the fact that Dressler maintained a blog on which he posted extensively about Greer was raised both by Greer’s counsel and by Dressler himself. See Hack App’x 66 (Dressler’s letter requesting access to Hack’s video‐recorded deposition and providing link to blog). The court was entitled to take judicial notice of Dressler’s blog posts, as are we. See Fed. R. Evid. 201. Further, their public availability on the internet site that Dressler concededly controlled cannot reasonably be contested; they continue to be available as of this writing. 19
We further conclude that the District Court failed to give adequate weight to Hack’s privacy interests. At the threshold, the court set the bar for what “amounts to the sort of ‘extraordinary circumstance’ that would justify keeping it from the public” decidedly too high in the context presented. Hack App’x 143. In the District Court’s view, the subject of the deposition video—although it concerned in substantial part Hack’s experience, as a minor, of sexual abuse by a respected religious figure and elder—simply did not amount to “[t]he archetypical extraordinary case,” which was “far more gruesome.” Id. The court provided as a contrasting example “videos made by [a] kidnapper of [a] blindfolded and bound rape victim,” such as a district court denied media access to in a 1980 case in another jurisdiction. Id. (citing In re KSTP Television, 504 F. Supp. 360 (D. Minn. 1980)). KSTP, the decision that the District Court pointed to, involved a request by a commercial television station “to view and copy some three hours of tapes received in evidence in a criminal case.” 504 F. Supp. at 361. The videos that the network sought depicted the criminal defendant, who by then had been convicted of kidnapping, interacting with one of his victims. Id. Of the nine hours of footage at issue, the court had received into evidence three hours. Id. Those hours contained images of “conversations and conduct preliminary to, and anticipatory of, the actual sexual acts” the defendant committed on his victim. Id. The KSTP court denied the network’s request, resting its decision on the nature of the conduct, its observation that “[a]ll of the information in the tapes has already been made available to the public,” and the high value it assigned the innocence and privacy of the victim. Id. at 362‐64 (concluding that there was “no public interest to be served by release of the tapes” here). 20 Some years later, in 1987, we decided CBS. There, we reversed a district court’s denial of the television network’s application to copy for possible broadcast a witness’s video deposition that had been shown in full in open court during a criminal trial. The deponent in CBS was an imprisoned former union leader who “appeared ill in the videotape and was compelled to testify concerning his involvement in illegal activities.” CBS, 828 F.2d at 961. In ordering the public release of the video deposition, we distinguished the case from KSTP, citing the videos that were at issue in KSTP as an example of judicial documents to which public access could lawfully be precluded. See id. But our citation there of KSTP should by no means be read to establish a hurdle of “gruesomeness” that other cases must clear to overcome the common law presumption of access, powerful as it is; indeed, the reasoning of the KSTP court more resonates with ours here. Nor is CBS determinative of the outcome here, as our primary focus in CBS was whether the presumption of public access applied at all to video recordings of depositions. We devoted very little discussion to the opposing party’s countervailing privacy interests, of which there were but few: In granting access in CBS, we observed only that “[o]ld age and ill health are neither uncommon nor generally a cause of severe embarrassment,” and concluded that the situation of the elderly and ill deponent, who was confessing to his own criminal conduct, “is simply not analogous to, say, that of a victim of a slasher.” Id. Other circumstances present in CBS also make that decision less apposite here: While the CBS deponent had been convicted of crimes relevant to his testimony, Hack has not been convicted of, or even charged with, any crime. While the CBS deponent described his own criminal activity, Hack described being a victim of a crime when he was a minor. And while the CBS deponent’s advanced age and illness were neither 21 uncommon nor particularly embarrassing, Hack’s description—of a sexual relationship that a trusted religious leader over 30 years his senior perpetrated in Hack’s youth and into his young adulthood—is likely both. Finally, that the video at issue here also contains Hack’s admission to his own wrongful behavior—namely, his failure to report Greer’s abuse of Mirlis—seems of relatively little import in the context of Mirlis’s suit against Greer. In sum, Hack is more akin to the “innocent third part[y]” whose privacy interests “weigh heavily in a court’s balancing equation,” Amodeo II, 71 F.3d at 1050, than he is to the CBS deponent whose circumstances were “solely the result of his criminal acts,” CBS, 828 F.2d at 961. In addition, although the District Court acknowledged that courts are generally protective of the privacy interest of non‐parties like Hack, it discounted the weight due that interest in Hack’s case. It gave three reasons: (1) Hack’s testimony had already been made publicly available in transcript form; (2) Hack effectively consented to the publication of his deposition testimony when he agreed to sit for a deposition without requesting authority to use a pseudonym or that the deposition be sealed; and (3) Hack evaded process and refused to appear and give live testimony at trial, a decision that created the need to present his video testimony to the jury in the first place. Each one of these rationales for discounting Hack’s privacy interests is flawed. With respect to the first rationale, the availability of a transcript of the deposition does not in our view necessarily eliminate or even diminish a party’s privacy interest in the publication or copying of a video of those proceedings. To the contrary: That the substance of the desired content is publicly available in some format (i.e., a transcript) tends in the circumstances presented here to cut against the public interest in the release 22 of the content in a different form (i.e., video), since the primary public interest—general availability of the relevant information—has already been served.12 We break no new ground by articulating this principle. The Supreme Court in Nixon explained, in declining to compel the release of audio tapes, that the public interest in accessing audio recordings is weaker where “[r]eporters also were furnished transcripts of . . . tapes,” reasoning that the fact that “[t]he contents of th[ose] tapes were given wide publicity” negated any “question of a truncated flow of information to the public.” 435 U.S. at 609. Here, as in Nixon, the substantive information conveyed to the jury in the video of Hack’s deposition has been made public and has been written about in the local press, to all appearances largely satisfying the legitimate public interest in the trial. What remains private is solely the video recorded images of Hack actually saying these words—the publication of which, especially on the Internet, would impose a significant burden on Hack by immediately and forever connecting the extremely personal content of his testimony with his likeness, exposing his emotions as a victim. We have not set an absolute rule that the public availability of a deposition transcript guarantees the court’s protection of a deposition video, nor do we do so now. As we observed in CBS, “[v]ideotaped depositions . . . convey the meaning of testimony more accurately and preserve demeanor evidence as well.” 828 F.2d at 960. These 12The availability of the transcript also tends to raise doubt about the legitimacy of Dressler’s motives in requesting physical access to the video. Indeed, as the District Court noted, mainstream media gave significant coverage to Hack’s testimony when it was presented in court. Yet none of these media entities intervened in the proceedings at bar to request access to the video; for purposes of their reporting, they were all apparently satisfied with either having heard the testimony firsthand or having access to the transcript. The record reflects that only Dressler, who has published personal details of Hack’s life unrelated to the subject matter of the trial, has sought access to the video. 23 undoubtedly are valuable components of the truth‐finding process. The general rule of production that we applied in 1987 in CBS thus remains vital today. But we must also acknowledge what has changed since we decided CBS in 1987: The astonishing and pervasive rise of the Internet; the attendant ease with which videos may be shared worldwide by individuals; and the eternal digital life with which those videos are likely endowed by even a single display online. These are all factors that multiply and intensify the privacy costs to the individual of releasing sensitive videos; those costs are undeniably greater than what they might have been 30 years ago. Whereas the subject of a video deposition made public in 1987 may have suffered brief notoriety and embarrassment as the subject of an evening’s newscast, today, Hack could reasonably fear that, for the rest of his life, this video would be the first result of an internet search for his name. Given the proliferation of smartphones and improved digital streaming capabilities, he could also reasonably expect, as a schoolteacher and father, that his students and his children would view the video not only at home, on family computers, but possibly also during (his) class, on their cell phones. Common sense and over two decades of widespread and constant use of the Internet are sufficient to tell us that a video of a person describing details of his abuse is likely to garner more attention, be distributed more widely, and last longer in the public’s attention than are copies of a transcript or even local news articles. With respect to the second rationale, Dressler argues that we should construe Hack’s failure to request a pseudonym for use during the deposition, to seek restrictions on the video’s airing to the jury, or to move to seal the transcript, as amounting to his consent to general publication of the entire video deposition. But this can hardly be a fair conclusion. As explained above, the dissemination of the deposition video and the publication of the transcript impose very different privacy burdens, regardless of the 24 fact that the transcript uses Hack’s name. Hack’s failure to request a pseudonym or the sealing of the transcript thus has little bearing on his privacy interest in the video, nor would it have had the effect of disguising his identity, given his unique position at the Yeshiva during the years in question. For the same reason, Hack’s failure to seek to prevent the video deposition from being played at trial—where it would be shown likely just once, to a limited audience, and in a venue where electronic recording is generally prohibited—cannot reasonably be treated as implicit consent to the video’s wider publication across the Internet. In certain instances, a person who declines to take reasonable steps to protect his or her private information may reasonably be understood to stake a lesser privacy claim in that information. Here, however, Hack diligently and timely objected to Dressler’s application. Only rarely will voluntary provision of sensitive evidence reasonably be understood to constitute consent to the widespread and likely permanent dissemination of a visual digital record of the formal encounter through which that evidence was given, when the encounter itself is not the allegedly critical act. With respect to the third rationale, Hack’s evasion of service, while certainly wrongful, was an attempt to protect his privacy by avoiding testifying in open court about sensitive and embarrassing subjects. Whatever sanction a non‐party witness might merit for such actions, publicly releasing the very sensitive images that the witness so fiercely struggled to keep private, where such release may not otherwise be warranted, is not among them, contrary to Dressler’s argument. A holding otherwise could be expected to disincentivize naturally reluctant victim‐witnesses from facilitating their depositions in the first place; it would hardly encourage them to give live testimony at trial.