Court Opinion

ID: 9782857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 19:25:37.072452+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:35:15.417460
License: Public Domain

Ireland, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part, with *395whom Spina, J. joins). I concur in the result and agree fully with the reasons stated in the court’s opinion for reaching the result. I share Justice Spina’s concern, however, that the impoundment issue has not been resolved correctly.
When we released this opinion initially we did not address the impoundment issue. That was an oversight that was quickly brought to our attention by the partnership’s counsel. We decided that the best course was to withdraw the opinion immediately and until we resolved the matter. We then solicited the parties’ views and the partnership’s view on whether the order of impoundment should remain intact. The court has now concluded that the impoundment order should be vacated to the extent of making public the financial details contained in the opinion, while leaving the rest of the record impounded. Ante at 362 n.l.
I would have left the impoundment order intact. The impoundment — which was preceded in the trial court by a comprehensive protective order agreed to by both sides and the partnership, covering much of the same material — was approved by a judge in the Probate and Family Court on motion of the partnership, supported by a lengthy and very detailed affidavit. The partnership made a strong case for the protection of its information. The partnership reasonably relied on the order. The case was tried as an impounded case. The clerk of this court then properly carried the impoundment forward on appeal, and the case file was closed from public inspection. See SJ.C. Rule 1:15, § 2 (b), as appearing in 401 Mass. 1301 (1988). The parties also treated the case as impounded on appeal: they clearly indicated on their briefs that this was an “Impounded Case”; and at oral argument their counsel were careful not to refer to the parties or the partnership by name. See id. at § 2 (c). The propriety of the impoundment was not an issue raised by either party on appeal. No one else was challenging the order or asking that it be vacated in whole or in part. I do not think it is fair to the partnership for the court in these circumstances to vacate the order on its own initiative.
I recognize that the impoundment order was not perfect. It appears to have been issued without express findings of good cause, and it was broader than strictly necessary to protect the partnership’s information. Reasonable minds can differ as to the specific infirmities, but I do not think the order was so egregious *396that we needed to reach out affirmatively and lift it on our own. In the spirit of what was intended, we could have and should have found alternative ways to deal with the imperfections. If we were concerned about the absence of express findings, we could have remanded the impoundment aspect of the case to the probate judge who issued the impoundment order, for him to make the necessary findings. We could have used pseudonyms for the parties and the partnership or, as Justice Spina appropriately suggests, we could have had a full discussion of the issues on appeal without revealing impounded details. Post at 398-399 (Spina, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). We also could have included in the opinion cautionary language for litigants, attorneys, and judges in future cases, stressing the need for them to comply with the letter and spirit of the rules on impoundment; reminding them that overbroad impoundments are subject to challenge; and warning them that such impoundments might even be revised by the court on its own initiative. I would not have thought it necessary, however, to do on our own in this particular case what no party or interested third person was asking us to do: undo the impoundment. The court’s approach in lifting the impoundment on its own, at such a late stage in the proceeding, is unnecessarily harsh in my view and unnecessarily exposes some of the partnership’s sensitive (heretofore impounded) financial information.
Given the court’s ruling, it may make sense for our rules committee to reexamine the rule on impounded appeals, S.J.C. Rule 1:15. I am concerned that the rule as it is currently written may give parties and nonparties who have obtained impoundment orders in the trial court a false sense of assurance that the impoundment will be honored by the appellate court if it is not being challenged. Perhaps the rule should be changed to require one who has obtained an impoundment order in the trial court to apply anew to the appellate court for impoundment of the appeal. At a bare minimum, the existing rule should be amended to make it more clear that the appellate court can vacate an impoundment on its own initiative at any point during the appellate process, after giving those involved an opportunity to be heard, as was done here.
As for this particular case, the unfortunate timing of the initial release of the opinion was, as it turns out, inconsequential. *397Had the court addressed the impoundment issue in the opinion initially, as we should have done, the outcome (in terms of vacating the impoundment to the limited extent of what has been said in the opinion) would have been the same, given the court’s view.