Opinion ID: 4512152
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Dressler’s Motives and Likely Use

Text: 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