On Tuesday, Judge Liman ordered the sealing of certain documents in Blake Lively’s ongoing lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and retaliation claims against Justin Baldoni and his production company, in connection with the filming of It Ends With Us. The parties had filed various motions to seal and unseal in connection with Lively’s motion for spoilation sanctions and defendants’ motion for summary judgment.
Both parties argued that the relevance of certain documents to the court’s summary judgment determination should guide the court in sealing or unsealing those documents. Judge Liman disagreed. As an initial matter, documents submitted in support of summary judgment are “categorically judicial documents” with a “strong presumption of public access,” which is a fundamental principle in our court system:
The purpose of promoting public access is not to appeal to any prurient interest or to cater to a morbid craving for that which is sensational and impure, but to enable democratic oversight of the courts, and admissibility determinations play an important part of that public accountability.
For efficiency reasons, the court also cannot be expected to review such documents “exhibit by exhibit, much less line by line.” But the problem with reviewing documents for relevance to summary judgment when considering sealing extends beyond efficiency:
It would also have the Court make privately some of the very determinations that under [the governing standards] it should make only under the glare of public scrutiny at the summary judgment stage. The Court’s decision about whether a particular document or item in a document is relevant is itself a judicial act about which the public has a right to know (and to criticize). Indeed, it may be among the more important decisions a court makes in ruling upon a motion for summary judgment. . . . In sum, on a motion for summary judgment, relevance is not a threshold issue that the Court must analyze before determining whether the presumption of public access attaches, what its strength is, and whether disclosure of the document would affect a party’s rights or implicate a higher value.