Hartford Courant Co. v. Pellegrino

• Decision Date: 08 June 2004
• Docket Number: Docket No. 03-9141.
• Citation: 380 F.3d 83
• Parties: THE HARTFORD COURANT COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellant, American Lawyer Media, Inc. d/b/a The Connecticut Law Tribune, Intervenor-Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Joseph H. PELLEGRINO, Chief Court Administrator and William J. Sullivan, Chief Justice, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

380 F.3d 83

THE HARTFORD COURANT COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellant, American Lawyer Media, Inc. d/b/a The Connecticut Law Tribune, Intervenor-Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Joseph H. PELLEGRINO, Chief Court Administrator and William J. Sullivan, Chief Justice, Defendants-Appellees.

Docket No. 03-9141.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: March 25, 2004.

Decided: June 8, 2004.

Amended: August 13, 2004.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, Gerard L. Goettel, J.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Ralph G. Elliot, Hartford, CT, for Plaintiffs-Appellants The Hartford Courant Company and American Lawyer Media, Inc. d/b/a/ The Connecticut Law Tribune.

Maureen Danehy Cox, Carmody & Torrance LLP, Waterbury, CT, for Defendants-Appellees Joseph H. Pellegrino and William J. Sullivan.

David A. Schulz, Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, L.L.P., New York, NY, for amici curiae The Associated Press, The Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists, The Day Publishing Company, the Hearst Corporation, the Record-Journal Publishing Company, NYP Holdings, Inc., The New York Times Company, and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (Jay Ward Brown, Alia L. Smith, David McCraw, John K. Keitt, Jr., Jan F. Constantine, Lucy A. Daglish, of counsel).

Before: MESKILL, KATZMANN, and WESLEY, Circuit Judges.

KATZMANN, Circuit Judge.

This case calls upon us to decide whether the public and press have a qualified First Amendment right to inspect docket sheets and, if so, the appropriate remedy for its violation by state courts. The Hartford Courant and The Connecticut Law Tribune appeal from the dismissal of their demand for injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Gerard L. Goettel, District Judge). The plaintiffs argued below that the longstanding Connecticut state court practice of sealing certain docket sheets, as well as entire case files, violated their right of access to judicial proceedings and documents established under the First Amendment. While refraining from deciding the merits of the newspapers' claim, the district court instead dismissed the case on the ground that the court administrators sued did not have the authority to provide the relief requested, that of producing the docket sheets, because doing so would contravene prior court orders. On appeal, as they did below, the plaintiffs assert that such orders may not exist. We determine that the press and public possess a qualified First Amendment right of access to docket sheets. We also hold that, if the materials at issue were sealed administratively, the named defendants have the authority to grant access. As we are unable to discern, on the face of the minimal record before us, whether the materials were sealed in accordance with judicial orders or statutes, we vacate the judgment dismissing the action and remand the matter to the district court to ascertain, at the very least, an answer to this question. Finally, after reviewing the abstention doctrines that the defendants have raised, we hold that none applies in this case.

I. BACKGROUND

Between 2002 and 2003, the newspaper plaintiffs learned that, over the prior 38 years, the Connecticut state court system had adjudicated what appeared to be thousands of cases where sealing procedures prohibited court personnel from allowing the public to access the files in those proceedings and, in certain comparatively rare instances, from acknowledging the existence of these cases altogether. Although some of these cases may have been sealed pursuant to a variety of statutory authorizations, including those directed at protecting juvenile offenders, see Hearing Before the Judiciary Comm. (Conn. Mar. 10, 2003) ("Judiciary Comm. Hearing") (statement of Rep. Farr), or those involving bar grievance procedures, see Judiciary Comm. Hearing (statement of Justice Peter Zarella), The Hartford Courant published an account that insinuated that many other cases may have been sealed simply at the behest of prominent individuals who were parties. See Eric Rich & Dave Altimari, Elite Enjoy "Secret File" Lawsuits, The Hartford Courant, Feb. 9, 2003, at A1 ("[J]udges have selectively sealed divorce, paternity and other cases involving fellow judges, celebrities and wealthy CEOs that, for most people, would play out in full view of the public....").

The revelation of this practice led to an investigation by the Connecticut General Assembly and considerable self-examination by the Connecticut judiciary. On March 10, 2003, the Judiciary Committee of the General Assembly held a hearing at which the Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, William J. Sullivan, testified as to the origins of the practice. As he stated:

The best I can determine is that this started somehow and it might have gone back as early as the 70's where it became an unwritten rule that in those days there were 16 or 20 Superior Court Judges who were really very, very powerful, much more powerful than the judges are today probably because we had a try system of judges. And they felt, when they felt it was necessary, they would seal a file and just start it.

Judiciary Comm. Hearing (statement of Chief Justice William J. Sullivan). While this account suggests that judges themselves were responsible for the complete sealing of such cases, other passages in the transcript indicate instead that the files might have been administratively closed. In response to a representative's question about whether "somehow it's administrative and that the judges['] inten[t] or even perhaps express direction is somehow misinterpreted by the clerical administrative support[,] [s]o that individual documents may have been inten[ded] to be sealed, but in fact, whole files and docket numbers are then sealed," Judiciary Comm. Hearing (statement of Rep. Hamm), Chief Justice Sullivan acknowledged his uncertainty about whether or not that was the case, Judiciary Comm. Hearing (statement of Chief Justice William J. Sullivan). Although the Connecticut Senate introduced legislation that would have required that "the names of the parties and the docket number in any civil or criminal matter in the Superior Court ... not be kept confidential" in any future or pending cases, the legislature had not enacted this bill by the end of the 2003 Assembly session. See S. 362, 2003 Gen. Assem., Jan. Sess. (Conn.2003).

Despite legislative inaction, the Connecticut judiciary itself promulgated new "Practice Book" rules — rules of court specifying procedures for closure more protective of the public's and the press's First Amendment rights of access and, in particular, mandating that the public be notified of potential closure of the courtroom or sealing of materials, that the judge articulate the overriding interest in closure or sealing and specify findings, and that any closure or sealing order be no broader than necessary. See Conn. Practice Book §§ 11-20(c)-(e), 11-20A (2004). The protections afforded by these new rules only became effective July 1, 2003, and were not applied retroactively.

This case concerns the system previously in place, which is best explained by a June 2000 memo from Civil Court Manager Judith D. Stanulis to the Trial Court Administrators and the Judicial District Chief Clerks (the "Stanulis Memo"). Although this Memo deals with filing, it appears to presume underlying court orders. It outlines three varieties of closure: under "level 1," which "should be used when a case is statutorily sealed or when the entire file is ordered sealed by the court," "the matter is confidential and no information is to be released or disclosed to the public, including the docket number and case caption," and should not be allowed to appear on any calendars; under "level 2," the entire file is sealed but the case caption and docket number may be disclosed; and under "level 3," specific documents are sealed. For both level 1 and 2 sealing, the "file is to be placed in an envelope and the outside is to be marked with the following information: Docket number; Case caption; Time and date of order to seal; Name of judge issuing order to seal; Whether there is a deadline after which disclosure may be made without a court order; and Name of person sealing the file." Once the Connecticut judiciary began to re-evaluate its prior sealing practices, the judiciary appears to have re-classified all but one of the 104 pre-existing "level 1" cases, as "level 2" cases. As the counsel for Connecticut asserted at oral argument in the district court,

It's our position that those — and there are thousands of those cases, Your Honor. It'sa — It is a fluid number, and if you read the various newspaper articles that are attached to the pleadings, you'll see that that number has changed. It's changed, in part, because case numbers are always fluid with cases coming into the system and being disposed of, but also because the judicial department has conducteda — an ongoing investigation of this entire issue, and as a result of that investigation what has been, in many instances, Level 1 sealed or case sealed — case level sealed, files have become Level 2 sealed files, and so on, so that number has fluctuated as a result of those two variables....

This description suggests a more flexible system of classification than would appear to be consistent with judicial orders. It is therefore not clear from record below whether court administrators interpreted the Stanulis Memo as requiring that sealing occur only to the extent that it was judicially commanded or read the document more broadly as authorizing administrative sealing.

In those cases where judges did issue sealing orders, these orders would have been authorized by several provisions in Connecticut law and the Practice Book. As of 1995, the most general of these provisions dealing with civil cases read:

Sec. 211B. Exclusion of the Public; Sealing...