Opinion
23-CV-4503 (BCM)
06-24-2024
LAUREN IVISON, Plaintiff, v. EXTEND FERTILITY, LLC, Defendant.
ORDER
BARBARA MOSES, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
The Court declines to so-order the proposed Confidentiality Agreement and Order (Prop. Conf. Ag.) (Dkt. 68) in its present form.
First, as the parties may be aware, courts in this district routinely disallow unilateral efforts to redact portions of otherwise-discoverable documents for reasons other than privilege, see, e.g., Al Thani v. Hanke, 2022 WL 1684271, at *1-2 (S.D.N.Y. May 26, 2022) (collecting cases), particularly where a protective order permits the producing party to designate any proprietary or competitively sensitive information as "confidential" or "highly confidential" and restrict it accordingly. Id. at *2. Here, both sides are willing to permit redactions for "non-responsive and/or irrelevant highly Confidential Information." Prop. Conf. Ag. ¶ 5. They may do so. However, they may not increase the burden on the Court by making in camera review the default solution to any dispute concerning the propriety of the redactions.
Second, as the parties should be aware, filing any judicial document under seal requires permission of the Court. Moses Ind. Prac. § 3; S.D.N.Y. ECF Rules & Insts. § 6. "To be approved, any sealing or redaction of a court filing must be narrowly tailored to serve the purpose that requires the sealing or redaction and must be otherwise consistent with the presumption in favor of public access to judicial documents described in Lugosch v. Pyramid Co. of Onondaga, 435 F.3d 110, 119-20 (2d Cir. 2006)." Moses Ind. Prac. § 3(e). The parties are cautioned that the designation of documents as "confidential" for discovery purposes does not, without more, justify a sealing or redaction order." Id.; see also Moses Model Prot. Order (available at https://nysd.uscourts.gov/hon-barbara-moses) ¶ 8. Consequently, the parties may not stipulate, in advance, that any and all documents containing information designated Confidential by a party "shall be filed under seal." Prop. Conf. Ag. ¶ 10.
SO ORDERED.