Brown v. Maxwell
| Decision Date | 03 July 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 17-1625 (CON),No. 18-2868-cv,August Term 2018, No. 17-1722(CON), No. 16-3945-cv(L),18-2868-cv |
| Citation | 929 F.3d 41 |
| Parties | Julie BROWN, Miami Herald Company, Intervenors-Appellants, v. Ghislaine MAXWELL, Defendant-Appellee, v. Virginia L. Giuffre, Plaintiff-Appellee. Alan M. Dershowitz, Michael Cernovich, dba Cernovich Media, Intervenors-Appellants, v. Virginia L. Giuffre, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Ghislaine Maxwell, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Sanford L. Bohrer (Christine N. Walz, Madelaine J. Harrington, New York, NY, on the brief), Holland & Knight LLP, Miami, FL, for Intervenors-Appellants Julie Brown and Miami Herald.
Ty Gee (Adam Mueller, on the brief), Haddon, Morgan and Foreman, P.C., Denver, CO, for Defendant-Appellee Ghislaine Maxwell.
Paul G. Cassell (Sigrid S. McCawley, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, on the brief), S.J Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, for Plaintiff-Appellee Virginia L. Giuffre.
Andrew G. Celli Jr. (David A. Lebowitz, on the brief), Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, New York, NY, for Intervenor-Appellant Alan M. Dershowitz.
Marc Randazza (Jay Marshall Wolman, Hartford, CT, on the brief), Randazza Legal Group, PLLC, Las Vegas, NV, for Intervenor-Appellant Michael Cernovich.
Before: Cabranes, Pooler, and Droney, Circuit Judges.
Intervenors-Appellants Alan M. Dershowitz ("Dershowitz"), Michael Cernovich ("Cernovich"), and the Miami Herald Company (with reporter Julie Brown, jointly the "Herald ") appeal from certain orders of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Robert W. Sweet, Judge ) denying their respective motions to unseal filings in a defamation suit. We conclude that the District Court failed to conduct the requisite particularized review when ordering the sealing of the materials at issue. At the same time, we recognize the potential damage to privacy and reputation that may accompany public disclosure of hard-fought, sensitive litigation. We therefore clarify the legal tools that district courts should use in safeguarding the integrity of their dockets. Accordingly, we VACATE the District Court's orders entered on November 2, 2016, May 3, 2017, and August 27, 2018, ORDER the unsealing of the summary judgment record as described further herein, and REMAND the cause to the District Court for particularized review of the remaining sealed materials.
The origins of this case lie in a decade-old criminal proceeding against financier Jeffrey Epstein ("Epstein"). On June 30, 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to Florida state charges of soliciting, and procuring a person under the age of eighteen for, prostitution. The charges stemmed from sexual activity with privately hired "masseuses," some of whom were under eighteen, Florida's age of consent. Pursuant to an agreement with state and federal prosecutors, Epstein pleaded to the state charges. He received limited jail-time, registered as a sex offender, and agreed to pay compensation to his victims. In return, prosecutors declined to bring federal charges.
Shortly after Epstein entered his plea, two of his victims, proceeding as "Jane Doe 1" and "Jane Doe 2," filed suit against the Government in the Southern District of Florida under the Crime Victims' Rights Act ("CVRA"). The victims sought to nullify the plea agreement, alleging that the Government failed to fulfill its legal obligations to inform and consult with them in the process leading up to Epstein's plea deal.1
On December 30, 2014, two additional unnamed victims—one of whom has now self-identified as Plaintiff-Appellee Virginia Giuffre ("Giuffre")—petitioned to join in the CVRA case. These petitioners included in their filings not only descriptions of sexual abuse by Epstein, but also new allegations of sexual abuse by several other prominent individuals, "including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders," as well as Dershowitz (a long-time member of the Harvard Law School faculty who had worked on Epstein's legal defense) and Defendant-Appellee Ghislaine Maxwell ("Maxwell").2
Dershowitz moved to intervene, seeking to "strike the outrageous and impertinent allegations made against him and to request a show cause order to the attorneys that have made them."3 Exercising its authority to "strike from a pleading an insufficient defense or any redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous matter ... on its own,"4 the Florida District Court (Kenneth A. Marra, Judge ) sua sponte struck all allegations against additional parties from the pleadings, including those against Dershowitz, and therefore denied Dershowitz's motion as moot.5
The stricken allegations, however, quickly found their way into the press, and several media outlets published articles repeating Giuffre's accusations. In response to the allegations, on January 3, 2015, Maxwell's publicist issued a press statement declaring that Giuffre's allegations "against Ghislaine Maxwell are untrue" and that her "claims are obvious lies."6
On September 21, 2015, Giuffre filed the underlying action against Maxwell in the Southern District of New York. Giuffre alleged that Maxwell had defamed her through this and other public statements. Extensive and hard-fought discovery followed. Due to the volume of sealing requests filed during discovery, on August 9, 2016, the District Court entered a Sealing Order that effectively ceded control of the sealing process to the parties themselves. The Sealing Order disposed of the requirement that the parties file individual letter briefs to request sealing and prospectively granted all of the parties' future sealing requests. In total, 167 documents—nearly one-fifth of the docket—were filed under seal. These sealed documents include, inter alia , motions to compel discovery, motions for sanctions and adverse inferences, motions in limine , and similar material.
On January 6, 2017, Maxwell filed a motion for summary judgment. The parties submitted their memoranda of law and supporting exhibits contesting this motion under seal. On March 22, 2017, the District Court denied the motion in a heavily redacted 76-page opinion. Once again, the entire summary judgment record, including the unredacted version of the District Court opinion denying summary judgment, remained under seal. On May 24, 2017, Maxwell and Giuffre executed a settlement agreement, and the case was closed the next day.
Over the course of the litigation before Judge Sweet, three outside parties attempted to unseal some or all of the sealed material. On August 11, 2016, Dershowitz moved to intervene, seeking to unseal three documents that, he argues, demonstrate that Giuffre invented the accusations against him. On January 19, 2017, Cernovich, an independent blogger and self-described "popular political journalist,"7 moved to intervene, seeking to unseal the summary judgment record, and Dershowitz joined his motion. On April 6, 2018, after the case had settled, the Herald moved to intervene and unseal the entire docket. The District Court granted each of these motions to intervene, but denied the related requests to unseal in orders entered November 2, 2016, May 3, 2017, and August 27, 2018, respectively.
The Appellants timely appealed from each of the orders denying their respective motions to unseal. Although each Appellant seeks the release of a different set of documents, all argue that the District Court failed to analyze the documents individually or properly apply the presumption of public access to court documents. We therefore ordered that the appeals be heard in tandem and held argument on March 6, 2019.
On March 11, 2019, we issued an order to show cause why we "should not unseal the summary judgment motion, including any materials filed in connection with this motion, and the District Court's summary judgment decision."8 The parties timely filed their responses.
There are two categories of sealed material at issue in these appeals: (1) the summary judgment record, which includes the parties' summary judgment briefs, their statements of undisputed facts, and incorporated exhibits; and (2) court filings made in the course of the discovery process and with respect to motions in limine . In this Opinion, we explain that our law requires the unsealing of the summary judgment materials and individualized review of the remaining sealed materials.
While the law governing public access to these materials is largely settled, we have not yet adequately addressed the potential harms that often accompany such access. These harms are apparent. Over forty years ago, the Supreme Court observed that, without vigilance, courts' files might "become a vehicle for improper purposes."9 Our legal process is already susceptible to abuse. Unscrupulous litigants can weaponize the discovery process to humiliate and embarrass their adversaries. Shielded by the "litigation privilege,"10 bad actors can defame opponents in court pleadings or depositions without fear of lawsuit and liability. Unfortunately, the presumption of public access to court documents has the potential to exacerbate these harms to privacy and reputation by ensuring that damaging material irrevocably enters the public record.
We therefore take the opportunity to describe the tools available to district courts in protecting the integrity of the judicial process, and emphasize the courts' responsibility to exercise these powerful tools. We also caution the public to critically assess allegations contained in judicial pleadings.
When reviewing a district court's decision to seal a filing or maintain such a seal, "we examine the court's factual findings for clear error, its...
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