United States District Court, D. Arizona
ORDER
DOMINIC W. LANZA UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.
Pending
before the Court is Plaintiff's “Motion to Seal
Plaintiff's Motion to Supplement the Administrative
Record and Its Respective Exhibits.” (Doc. 56.)
Plaintiff asserts that his motion to supplement and the
exhibits thereto should be sealed because they “are
comprised of over 344 pages and contain, among other things,
Plaintiff's personal identifiers, such as full name,
address, date of birth, and Social Security number, medical
records, tests, and evaluations, and references to and
discussions of such records and Plaintiff's medical
conditions.” (Id. at 2.) He asserts that his
right to privacy is a compelling reason to seal the documents
and that the less-restrictive alternative of redaction is
“not practical” and “would be overly
burdensome and very time consuming” due to “to
the volume of the documents (344 pages) and the fact that a
simple redaction of personal identifiers would not protect
against disclosure of the overall private content of the
documents in this case, including but not limited to,
Plaintiff's confidential medical information.”
Id.
The
public has a general right to inspect judicial records and
documents, such that a party seeking to seal a judicial
record must overcome “a strong presumption in favor of
access.” Kamakana v. City & Cty. of
Honolulu, 447 F.3d 1172, 1178 (9th Cir. 2006). To do so,
the party must “articulate compelling reasons supported
by specific factual findings that outweigh the general
history of access and the public policies favoring disclosure
. . . .” Id. at 1178-79 (internal quotation
marks and citations omitted). The Court must then
“conscientiously balance the competing interests of the
public and the party who seeks to keep certain judicial
records secret.” Id. at 1179 (internal
quotation marks omitted). “After considering these
interests, if the court decides to seal certain judicial
records, it must base its decision on a compelling reason and
articulate the factual basis for its ruling, without relying
on hypothesis or conjecture.” Id. (internal
quotation marks omitted). The “stringent”
compelling-reasons standard applies to all filed motions and
their attachments where the motion is “more than
tangentially related to the merits of a case.” Ctr.
for Auto Safety v. Chrysler Grp., LLC, 809 F.3d 1092,
1096, 1101 (9th Cir. 2016). The Court agrees with Plaintiff
that the “compelling reasons” standard applies
here. (Doc. 56 at 1.)
Regarding
the contention that redacting personally identifying
information from a large quantity of documents would be
burdensome and time-consuming, the unfortunate reality of
litigation is that at times it entails tedious and
time-consuming work. Cf. Brown Bear v. Cuna Mut.
Grp., 266 F.R.D. 310, 321 (D.S.D. 2009) (“[T]he
court is not aware of any binding authority that concludes
that a review of numerous files in order to redact
insureds' personal information and segregate privileged
information necessarily makes producing such documents an
undue burden.”). The annoyance and expense of taking
time to redact personal information from documents ordinarily
cannot outweigh the public's interest in access.
As to
Plaintiff's contention that 344 pages of
documents-including the motion to supplement itself-should be
sealed to protect Plaintiff's right to privacy regarding
his medical information (Doc. 56 at 2), this rationale is
both overgeneralized and substantively insufficient.
“[G]eneralized statements supporting sealing are
inadequate; a party must articulate specific facts to justify
sealing, and must do so with respect to each item sought to
be sealed.” Krieger v. Nationwide Mut. Ins.
Co., 2012 WL 1623158, *1 (D. Ariz. 2012) (internal
quotation marks omitted); see also Kamakana, 447
F.3d at 1184 (“Simply mentioning a general category of
privilege, without any further elaboration or any specific
linkage with the documents, does not satisfy the
burden.”). Moreover, although the documents are largely
composed of Plaintiff's medical records, in which
Plaintiff has a privacy interest, Plaintiff has placed his
medical condition at issue by filing this ERISA action.
Krieger, 2012 WL 1623158 at *1 (“Plaintiff put
his medical condition at issue when he filed for benefits.
The mere assertion that Plaintiff considers medical and
personal information sensitive does not amount to a
compelling reason to seal.”); Young v. Liberty Mut.
Group, Inc., 2014 WL 6886018, *2 (D. Ariz. 2014)
(“[G]iven the centrality of Plaintiff's medical
condition to the case, Plaintiff's privacy interests are
not a compelling reason to seal the records from public
access. Accordingly, the Court will not seal materials
containing Plaintiff's medical information.”).
Indeed, Plaintiff's own assertions about the documents
suggest they are central to the issues in this case-he argues
in his motion to supplement that the proffered records are
“highly relevant and probative” and “vital
to a ‘full and fair' review pursuant to
ERISA.” (Doc. 57 at 1-2.) Considering the asserted
importance of the medical records to the case,
Plaintiff's privacy interest does not outweigh the
“public interest in understanding the judicial
process.” Kamakana, 447 F.3d at 1181.
Finally,
it would be inappropriate to seal the motion to supplement
itself for the reasons explained above and for the additional
reason that the motion contains law and argument, in which
the public interest is certainly not outweighed by any
privacy interests. B2B CFO Partners, LLC v. Kaufman,
2010 WL 2104257, *1 (D. Ariz. 2010).
Accordingly,
IT IS ORDERED that:
(1) Plaintiff's motion to seal (Doc. 56) is
denied;
(2) Pursuant to LRCiv 5.6(e), the lodged document (Doc. 57)
will not be filed but will remain under seal. Plaintiff may
resubmit the document in a manner that ...