Opinion ID: 782262
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Right of Access to Judicial Records

Text: 34 Phillips notes that [m]uch of the information that surfaces during pretrial discovery may be unrelated, or only tangentially related, to the underlying cause of action. Therefore, restraints placed on discovered, but not yet admitted, information are not a restriction on a traditionally public source of information. 307 F.3d at 1213 (quoting Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart, 467 U.S. 20, 33, 104 S.Ct. 2199, 81 L.Ed.2d 17 (1984)). When discovery material is filed with the court, however, its status changes. If the documents are not among those which have traditionally been kept secret for important policy reasons, Times Mirror Co. v. United States, 873 F.2d 1210, 1219 (9th Cir.1989), then the public policy reasons behind a presumption of access to judicial documents (judicial accountability, education about the judicial process etc.), Phillips, 307 F.3d at 1213, apply. In Nixon v. Warner Communications, 435 U.S. 589, 597, 98 S.Ct. 1306, 55 L.Ed.2d 570 (1978), the Supreme Court recognized a federal common law right to inspect and copy public records and documents. This right extends to pretrial documents filed in civil cases, including materials submitted in connection with motions for summary judgment. San Jose Mercury News, 187 F.3d at 1102; Republic of the Philippines v. Westinghouse Elec. Corp., 949 F.2d 653, 660 (3d Cir.1991). 35 In this circuit, we start with a strong presumption in favor of access to court records. Hagestad v. Tragesser, 49 F.3d 1430, 1434 (9th Cir.1995) (recognizing strong presumption in context of civil trial); accord United States v. Edwards, 672 F.2d 1289, 1294 (7th Cir.1982) (same in context of criminal trial); United States v. Criden, 648 F.2d 814, 823 (3d Cir.1981) (same). The common law right of access, however, is not absolute and can be overridden given sufficiently compelling reasons for doing so. San Jose Mercury News, 187 F.3d at 1102. In making the determination, courts should consider all relevant factors, including: 36 the public interest in understanding the judicial process and whether disclosure of the material could result in improper use of the material for scandalous or libelous purposes or infringement upon trade secrets.... After taking all relevant factors into consideration, the district court must base its decision on a compelling reason and articulate the factual basis for its ruling, without relying on hypothesis or conjecture. 37 Hagestad, 49 F.3d at 1434 (internal citations and quotations omitted). This process allows for meaningful appellate review of whether relevant factors were considered and given appropriate weight. Id. If the district court conscientiously balances the competing interests and articulates compelling reasons supported by specific factual findings, its decision will be reviewed only for an abuse of discretion. San Jose Mercury News, 187 F.3d at 1102-03 (reviewing for clear error a district court decision based on a failure to recognize the existence of a pre-judgment federal common law right of access to civil court documents). 38 In Phillips, however, we carved out an exception to the presumption of access. The issue presented in that case was whether the presumption of access applies to material filed with the court under seal pursuant to a valid protective order. 307 F.3d at 1213. We held that when a party attaches a sealed discovery document to a nondispositive motion, the usual presumption of the public's right of access is rebutted. Id. (emphasis added). We reasoned that the presumption of access was rebutted because [w]hen a court grants a protective order for information produced during discovery, it already has determined that `good cause' exists to protect this information from being disclosed to the public by balancing the needs for discovery against the need for confidentiality. Id. Applying the presumption of access in such a circumstance would undermine a district court's power to fashion effective protective orders. In short, good cause suffices to warrant preserving the secrecy of sealed discovery material attached to nondispositive motions. As we noted previously, to have been sealed at all, the discovery material in this case should have met the good cause standard of Rule 26(c). 39 Our holding in Phillips was expressly limited to the status of materials filed under seal when attached to a non-dispositive motion. Here, some of the sealed materials in the public record are attached to the summary judgment motions. There are good reasons to distinguish between dispositive and nondispositive motions. In Seattle Times, the Supreme Court noted that [m]uch of the information that surfaces during pretrial discovery may be unrelated, or only tangentially related, to the underlying cause of action. 467 U.S. at 33, 104 S.Ct. 2199. The same cannot be said for materials attached to a summary judgment motion because summary judgment adjudicates substantive rights and serves as a substitute for trial. Rushford v. The New Yorker Magazine, 846 F.2d 249, 252 (4th Cir.1988). As the Fourth Circuit held in Rushford, once the [sealed discovery] documents are made part of a dispositive motion [e.g., a summary judgment motion ruled upon by the court] ... they lose their status of being raw fruits of discovery, and no longer enjoy protected status without some overriding interests in favor of keeping the discovery documents under seal. Id. at 252. 40 In short, we follow the lead of the Fourth Circuit and hold that the presumption of access is not rebutted where, as here, documents subject to a protective order are filed under seal as attachments to a dispositive motion. Id. The Hagestad `compelling reasons' standard continues to apply. 41 In the instant case, the district court denied the Private Intervenors access to approximately eighty-five documents that had been filed with the court in the Foltz litigation, including discovery and summary judgment motions and supporting materials. At first glance, it appears that the district court identified compelling reasons for maintaining a seal on certain court records. It conducted an in camera review of the documents in the court file 6 and recognized the proper legal standards for denying access to court records as described above. It also acknowledged that [a] litigant who might be embarrassed, incriminated, or exposed to litigation through dissemination of materials is not, without more, entitled to the court's protection.... Dec. 14, 1999 Dist. Ct. Order at 12 (citing Nestle Foods Corp. v. Aetna Cas. and Sur. Co., 129 F.R.D. 483, 486 (D.N.J.1990); Wauchop v. Domino's Pizza, Inc., 138 F.R.D. 539, 546-47 (N.D.Ind.1991); Culinary Foods, Inc. v. Raychem Corp., 151 F.R.D. 297, 301 (N.D.Ill.1993)). The court concluded that State Farm failed to provide articulable facts showing a compelling reason to seal the entire court file. Therefore, it granted the intervenors' motion to unseal in part. 42 State Farm has asserted what it considers to be compelling reasons to retain the seal on the remaining court records. At trial, State Farm argued that these materials contain confidential financial information, third-party medical records, personnel files, and trade secrets. The district court deemed these compelling reasons to maintain the seal on the summary judgment motions and supporting materials as well as other materials originally filed under seal. The district court rejected the Private Intervenors' argument for redaction of confidential information, concluding that redaction would leave only meaningless connective words and phrases that would be of no benefit in collateral litigation. 43 The district court's analysis is misleading. We have previously noted State Farm's failure to identify where in the documents confidential financial information and trade secrets are to be found. Our review of the record also reveals that, in fact, very few of the documents contain any third-party medical or personnel information. Most of the material in the sealed record is composed of depositions of doctors and CMR employees regarding CMR's relationship with State Farm, CMR's boilerplate medical reports, and the forgery of doctors' signatures on the reports. Contrary to the district court's conclusion, the limited number of third-party medical and personnel records can be redacted easily to protect third-party privacy interests while leaving other meaningful information. 44 In considering the Private Intervenors' redaction argument, the district court overestimated the amount of private information that would have to be concealed. Simply redacting the identifying information of third parties ( e.g., their names, addresses, telephone numbers, and social security numbers) from these records and disclosing the remaining information would not injure the third parties but would reveal only State Farm's actions in processing personal injury claims. This disclosure might harm State Farm by exposing it to additional liability and litigation, as noted above, but a litigant is not entitled to the court's protection from this type of harm. See Nestle Foods, 129 F.R.D. at 486. 45 We do not see how the presence of a small number of third-party medical and personnel records that can be redacted with minimal effort constitutes good cause, let alone a compelling reason, for this protective order to overcome the strong presumption in favor of public access. The district court abused its discretion in concluding that this first proposed compelling reason justified maintaining the seal on these judicial records. See Hagestad, 49 F.3d at 1434 (observing that meaningful appellate review of an order sealing court records entails determining whether relevant factors were considered and given appropriate weight). 46 State Farm also argues that a second compelling reason, unarticulated by the district court, justifies maintaining a seal on all records originally produced during discovery. Specifically, State Farm contends that it relied on the confidentiality provisions of the protective order issued by the district court in consenting to discovery requests and settling the Foltz litigation. We must therefore examine what heightened protection exists for discovery materials that were filed. 47 The central concern in determining whether access should be granted to documents sealed under a protective order is whether that order was relied upon in the decision to produce documents. See Beckman, 966 F.2d at 475. It is axiomatic that: 48 Among the goals furthered by protective orders is reducing conflict over discovery and facilitating the flow of information through discovery. Where that has happened, changing the ground rules later is to be avoided because protective orders that cannot be relied upon will not foster cooperation through discovery. 49 Wright, Miller & Marcus § 2044.1. Of course, the extent to which a party can rely on a protective order depends on the extent to which the order did reasonably induce the party to allow discovery as opposed to settling the case. Beckman, 966 F.2d at 475; Wright, Miller & Marcus § 2044.1 (commenting that the effect of reliance depends on its reasonableness). 50 Here, two protective orders entered during discovery apply in whole or part to documents eventually filed with the court. The first protects evidence produced by State Farm in the course of pursuing its motion to disqualify the law firm representing the plaintiff. We do not upset this ruling. It deals with the very narrow issue of whether plaintiff's counsel should be disqualified. We accept the proposition that State Farm, to present this issue, would be required to produce attorney-client communications and possibly work product that are traditionally protected from disclosure. Neither the public nor collateral litigants have any apparent right to or interest in such disclosure. This does not foreclose independent discovery in any collateral litigation. We see no conceivable policy reason to serve up such information on a silver platter. 51 The second protective order on which State Farm allegedly relied is a blanket one treating all information produced in connection with the discovery process as confidential. As noted above, [r]eliance will be less with a blanket [protective] order, because it is by nature overinclusive. Beckman, 966 F.2d at 476. Because State Farm obtained the blanket protective order without making a particularized showing of good cause with respect to any individual document, it could not reasonably rely on the order to hold these records under seal forever. See San Jose Mercury News, 187 F.3d at 1103; Olympic Refining, 332 F.2d at 264-66, cited with approval in Beckman, 966 F.2d at 475-76. Thus, State Farm's reliance interest fails to offer a compelling reason to overcome the presumption in favor of access, and State Farm offers no other. 52 State Farm has thus identified no compelling reason to justify sealing the documents in this court record, with the exception of the court records covered by the protective order dealing with the disqualification of plaintiff's counsel. Because the district court abused its discretion in denying the Private Intervenors' motion to unseal the court records unrelated to the disqualification issue, we reverse and remand. On remand, we instruct the district court to redact identifying information from third-party medical and personnel records. Then, with the exception of the court records covered by the disqualification protective order, which may remain under seal, it must remove the seal from all other court records unless it can specify sufficiently compelling reasons for maintaining a seal over particular documents.