942 F.2d 130 (2nd Cir. 1991), 1394, City of Hartford v. Chase
| Citation | 942 F.2d 130 |
| Docket Number | 1394,Docket 91-7074. |
| Date | 14 August 1991 |
| Parties | CITY OF HARTFORD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. David T. CHASE; Chase Family Partnership; One Corporate Center, Inc.; Chase Family Limited Partnership No. 3; One Commercial Plaza, Inc.; David T. Chase Enterprises, Inc.; Chase Enterprises, Inc.; Olympia & York Hartford, Inc.; O & Y (U.S.) Development Company, L.P.; L.N. Bofox Real Estate Development Corp. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Page 130
Argued June 5, 1991.
Page 131
Charles L. Howard, Hartford, Conn. (Shipman & Goodwin, of counsel), for plaintiff-appellant City of Hartford.
Page 132
Stuart Bear, Bridgeport, Conn. (Jacob D. Zeldes, Zeldes, Needle & Cooper, of counsel), for defendants-appellants David T. Chase; Chase Family Partnership, One Corporate Center, Inc., Chase Family Ltd. Partnership No. 3, One Commercial Plaza, Inc., David T. Chase Enterprises, Inc., Chase Enterprises, Inc., Cavanagh, Fritz & Co., Interstate Management Corp., Interstate Management Associates.
(Stanley D. Robinson, Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hayes & Handler, New York City, of counsel), for defendants-appellants Olympia & York Hartford, Inc., O & Y (U.S.) Development Co., L.P., L.N. Bofox Real Estate Development Corp., O & Y (U.S.) Development General Partner Corp.
(Eric W. Wiechmann, Cummings & Lockwood, of counsel, Hartford, Conn.), for defendant-appellant Peat Marwick Main & Co.
Ralph G. Elliot, Hartford, Conn. (Tyler, Cooper & Alcorn, of counsel), for intervenors-appellees William J. Keveney, III and The Hartford Courant.
Before OAKES, Chief Judge, and PRATT and ALTIMARI, Circuit Judges.
OAKES, Chief Judge:
The City of Hartford and David T. Chase, et al., appeal from an order of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, Peter C. Dorsey, Judge, interpreting, and--as will be discussed below--modifying, a prior order he had issued formalizing the settlement of a lawsuit between appellants. For the reasons set forth below, we reverse the judgment of the district court and remand for further proceedings.
BACKGROUND
This appeal stems from arrangements between the City of Hartford (the "City") and a number of developers (the "Developers"), related to the construction, operation and financing of two commercial office buildings in downtown Hartford. The arrangements involved materials the parties regarded as highly confidential, and, as a result, the parties entered into an agreement (the "Confidentiality Agreement") that required the City to keep confidential all proprietary materials provided by the Developers.
After the arrangements were settled, a dispute arose between the City and the Developers, and, on April 11, 1989, the City filed suit. Pursuant to the City's request, the district court agreed to keep the pleadings under seal "pending further order of the Court." In an effort to assure the continued confidentiality of its materials, the Developers initiated settlement discussions with the City. After arriving at a conditional settlement, the parties informed the court that final resolution of the dispute was conditioned upon the court's entry of an order assuring that the contents of the settlement would remain confidential.
On September 29, 1989, the court filed an order adopting the parties' stipulated settlement. That order contained specific proscriptions against disclosure of the court file, as well as of "any document, information or discussion relating to the Settlement Agreement which have [sic] taken place and will take place" (the "Confidentiality Order"). 1 Under the terms of the settlement agreement, the court's entry of the Confidentiality Order served to nullify the provisions of the original Confidentiality Agreement. After the settlement was concluded, the parties entered into amended and restated leases relating to the two commercial office buildings.
On October 31, 1989, the Hartford Courant and its reporter William J. Keveney, III
Page 133
(the "Intervenors") moved to intervene and to vacate the Confidentiality Order. While their motion was pending, they also instituted proceedings before the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission ("FOIC") to compel the City, pursuant to the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), to disclose materials in its possession related to the lawsuit.
On March 30, 1990, Judge Dorsey granted the Intervenors' motion to intervene, but denied their request to vacate the Confidentiality Order 733 F.Supp. 533. First, he concluded that the Confidentiality Order was not improvidently granted. Second, he found that the Intervenors might be able to compel disclosure from the City under the FOIA, thus avoiding the necessity of vacating the Confidentiality Order.
On April 6, 1990, Intervenors moved for reconsideration of the March 30 ruling. In their motion, they suggested that the FOIC proceedings could not provide them with full relief, as the Confidentiality Order would provide the City with a defense to disclosure of the materials. On July 6, 1990, Judge Dorsey issued another opinion, which reiterated his view that the Confidentiality Order did not preclude the FOIC from ordering the City to disclose materials in its possession related to the lawsuit, but rather precluded only an order requiring disclosure of the court file. The original parties to the lawsuit then moved for reconsideration, arguing that the Confidentiality Agreement was an absolute bar to disclosure under the FOIC, and that the court's March 30 and July 6 statements to the contrary were not supported by the terms of the Confidentiality Order. On January 9, 1991, the court issued its final opinion on this matter, stating once again that the FOIC could compel the City to disclose confidential materials in its possession regardless of the provisions of the Confidentiality Order. The original parties now appeal.
DISCUSSION
1. Appealability
Before reaching the merits, we pause to address two threshold questions of appealability. The first concerns Rule 4(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, which requires parties to a civil case to file their notice of appeal no more than thirty days after the date of entry of the lower court's order. Here, appellants did not file their notice of appeal until January 18, 1991, more than thirty days after Judge Dorsey entered his orders of March 30 and July 6, 1990. Thus, at the outset, we must determine whether we have jurisdiction to consider the March 30 and July 6 rulings on this appeal, or whether we are limited to entertaining the appeal from the ruling of January 9.
The answer to this question, we believe, lies in Rule 4(a)(4), which provides that "[i]f a timely motion under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is filed in the district court by any party ... under Rule 59 [concerning motions for amendment of judgments] ..., the time for appeal for all parties shall run from the entry of the order ... granting or denying [the Rule 59 motion]." Here, the motion for reconsideration filed by Intervenors (resulting in the July 6 order), as well as the motion filed by appellants (resulting in the January 9 order), were not explicitly premised on Rule 59, but rather were based on Rule 9(e) of the local rules of the District of Connecticut. Motions for reconsideration under local rule 9(e), however, are as a practical matter the same thing as motions for amendment of judgment under Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e)--each seeks to reopen a district court's decision on the theory that the court made mistaken findings in the first instance. As such, for purposes of Rule 4(a)(4), we believe that a motion under local rule 9(e) must be treated the same as a motion under Rule 59. See C. Wright, A. Miller, E. Cooper & E. Gressman, 16 Federal Practice and Procedure § 3950, at 364 n. 7 (1977) ("Any kind of motion that draws into question the correctness of the district court judgment is considered to be a motion 'to alter or amend the judgment' under Civil Rule 59(e). Such a motion may variously be styled a motion to reconsider, a
Page 134
motion for rehearing, a motion to reargue, a motion to vacate, or a motion to set aside the judgment."); cf. Fischer v. United States Dep't of Justice, 759 F.2d 461, 464 (5th Cir.1985) (per curiam) (finding that, because the appellant's motion under Rule 60(b) "call[ed] into question the correctness of the underlying judgment," it should be treated as a motion under Rule 59(e) for purposes of calculating the timeliness of the appeal). But the motion in this case was itself technically not timely, since it was filed 21 days after the entry of judgment, and not within the 10-day period as required by Rule 9(e)(1). Nevertheless, because the district court entertained the motion and ruled on its merits, "the time for appeal may begin to run anew from the date on which the court disposed of the untimely application." See F.T.C. v. Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co., 344 U.S. 206, 210, 73 S.Ct. 245, 248, 97 L.Ed. 245 (1952). Accordingly, the time for appeal in the present case did not begin running until January 9, 1991, when the last motion to reconsider was denied. The appeals from all three orders are therefore timely.
The timeliness of the present appeals is but one of the jurisdictional problems with which we are confronted, however. A more fundamental question remains as to whether the language about which appellants are upset--specifically, the language indicating that the original Confidentiality Order would not provide a defense to a FOIC request for documents in the City's possession--is appealable in the first instance....
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Conduct of Attorneys
...& Pub. Pol’y 227 (2010). 22. See United States v. Loughner, 807 F. Supp. 2d 828, 836 (D. Ariz. 2011) (quoting City of Hartford v. Chase, 942 F.2d 130, 135 (2d Cir. 1991)) (“a federal court’s power to seal documents takes precedence over FOIA rules that would otherwise allow those documents ......