Opinion ID: 787090
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Unsealing of Documents6

Text: 44 Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(c) permits a district court to make any order which justice requires to protect a party or person from annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense upon a showing by a movant for the order of good cause. [T]he party seeking a protective order has the burden of showing that good cause exists for issuance of that order. It is equally apparent that the obverse also is true, i.e., if good cause is not shown, the discovery materials in question should not receive judicial protection and therefore would be open to the public for inspection. Agent Orange, 821 F.2d at 145. 45 Here, the Bank relied in the district court entirely on its position, with which, as we have explained, we disagree, that the district court had no jurisdiction to modify the protective order and thereby unseal the summary judgment documents. As we have noted, these documents, which related to the court's ruling on a motion for summary judgment, were presumptively subject to public access. 7 The Bank made no effort to rebut that presumption by establishing that there was a continuing compelling reason to require that the documents remain under seal. No such showing having been attempted, let alone made, the district court was well within its discretion to order that the seal on the documents be lifted. 46 B. The Amount of the Settlement: The Published Unsealing Order and the May 27, 2003, Transcript 47 The amount paid by the Bank to Gambale in connection with the settlement of her lawsuit stands on starkly different footing. That amount is set forth in settlement documents that were entered into on a confidential basis between the parties and are not themselves part of the court record. There is no established presumption of access of which we have been made aware with respect to the information contained in them. Cf. United States v. Glens Falls Newspapers, Inc., 160 F.3d 853, 857 (2d Cir.1998) (holding that there is no presumptive right of access to settlement discussions and documents); Pansy v. Borough of Stroudsburg, 23 F.3d 772, 781 (3d Cir.1994) (concluding that when a settlement agreement is not filed with, interpreted by, or enforced by a court, it is not a judicial record presumed to be accessible); SEC v. Van Waeyenberghe, 990 F.2d 845, 849 (5th Cir.1993) (Once a settlement is filed in district court, it becomes a judicial record. The presumption in favor of the public's common law right of access to court records therefore applies to settlement agreements that are filed and submitted to the district court for approval. (citation omitted)). We cannot and do not conclude that there can never be a circumstance or a showing that would require such disclosure. At the same time, however, there may well be valid reasons in this and other cases terminated by settlement for maintaining the amount of settlement in confidence when the settlement itself was conditioned on confidentiality and when the settlement documents were not filed with the court and were not the basis for the court's adjudication. If nothing else, honoring the parties' express wish for confidentiality may facilitate settlement, which courts are bound to encourage. See Glens Falls Newspapers, Inc., 160 F.3d at 857 (approving the sealing of settlement documents and drafts because of, inter alia, the court's responsibility to encourage and facilitate settlements). 48 The confidential settlement amount was disclosed to the court at a conference with counsel for the parties. At the conference, the district court insisted on learning the settlement amount without making a determination whether public disclosure of the amount was required. The Bank, based on what it may have thought were assurances of confidentiality, complied. 49 Of course, the statements at the conference, including the settlement amount, having been reduced to transcript form and filed, were part of a judicial record to which some presumption of openness, however gauged, may have therefore attached. See Amodeo I, 44 F.3d at 145 (describing judicial documents as those that are relevant to the performance of the judicial function and useful in the judicial process). We think, however, that the presumption, such as it was, was a weak one under these circumstances: The amount of the settlement was confidential, the parties articulated the reasons for such confidentiality, and the amount made its way into the transcript only in response to the court's apparently casual questioning of counsel in the course of proceedings addressing the settlement, not the adjudication, of litigation. 8 Without some further showing of public interest in the disclosure of the settlement amount, the Bank's reasons for maintaining the confidentiality easily overcome the markedly weak presumption of access here. 9 We think that it would therefore be an abuse of discretion for the court to unseal the May 23, 2003, transcript, unless all confidential information (including references, direct and indirect, to confidential information) is redacted from it and no party has otherwise carried its burden of establishing that the document should be sealed in its entirety. We remand the case to the district court for it to order the transcript, under these conditions, to remain under seal. 50 For the same reasons, we think that it was a serious abuse of discretion for the district court to refer to the magnitude of the settlement amount — theretofore confidential — in the Unsealing Order. But however confidential it may have been beforehand, subsequent to publication it was confidential no longer. It now resides on the highly accessible databases of Westlaw and Lexis and has apparently been disseminated prominently elsewhere. 10 We simply do not have the power, even were we of the mind to use it if we had, to make what has thus become public private again. Cf. SmithKline Beecham Corp. v. Pentech Pharms., Inc., 261 F.Supp.2d 1002, 1008 (N.D.Ill.2003) (Posner, J., sitting by designation) (deciding that a motion to seal portions of an agreement containing confidential information would not be granted as to redacted aspects of the agreement already disclosed in the court's opinion). The genie is out of the bottle, albeit because of what we consider to be the district court's error. We have not the means to put the genie back. 11