A federal judge denied AT&T’s request on Wednesday to force the Electronic Frontier Foundation to return documents the nonprofit organization received from a retired AT&T employee. The documents that former AT&T technician Mark Klein gave EFF earlier this year, and which the court has sealed, contain details of what EFF and Klein are alleging is a secret agreement between the telecommunications company and the National Security Agency to provide the government agency with illegal access to communications belonging to its customers. (Salon)
When a court seals evidence like this, does it usually mean that the evidence is subject to use in a future legal proceeding?
Sealing and confidentiality are different concepts. The former relates to how the court manages its own files. Typically those are open to the public. Sealing changes that. Confidentiality applies to the parties, but usually only to materials exchanged between them during discovery. Both sealing and confidentiality relate to administration of the case itself. For a party to get the relief ATT requested here, i.e., disgorgement of materials supplied by a third party not pursuant to discovery, it would have to show an independent right to the remedy, i.e., one arising under federal or state law. Apparently the judge concluded that ATT had made no such showing.
I believe the judge ordered the documents to be sealed until such a time as he can determine what to do with them. The most recent ruling was not, I believe, the final determination, but rather a ruling that AT&T could not get them back right now.
What I believe happened was that an ex-employee of AT&T took some documents from ATT&T, the defendant, and turned them over to the plaintiff, EFF. The ex-employee also turned them over to some newspapers. The judge ordered that the documents be sealed until a final determination as to whether they involve trade secrets or national security issues, could be made. AT&T then requested the copies that EFF obtained back, but the judge denied that motion. However, the judge did order EFF not to distribute any more copies of the documents and that the documents were to remain under seal until a final determination can be made.
To answer your specific question, I believe the items are not sealed because they may be used in future proceedings, but rather because they may contain “proprietary information” (trade secrets) or information that may touch on national security (which I don’t think it does).
Not that it really matters in this day in age, because the ex-employee is not a party to the case, and is not bound by the judge’s ruling. He is free to distribute the documents (at least until AT&T sues him), and has.
Nope. It means the information isn’t available for inspection by the general public. It happens when confidential information is filed as part of court proceedings.
Here is a recent article describing procedings in California where the California Supreme Court invalidated a statute requiring courts to seal divorce files on the request of any party. http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/05/19/burkle.divorce.ap/index.html
This is the order that they are talking about in the OP’s article.
Sorry for the bad formatting. Copied it from a pdf.
Anyway, sometimes courts are too willing to seal files. OTOH, the sealing part can be tricky in practice; sometimes the clerk will screw up and leave sealed stuff in the public file.
California recently has cracked down on the practice. See, e.g., Cal. R. Ct. 243.1(d) (establishing factual findings the court must make before sealing any records). Also, although I haven’t read the full opinion (warning: pdf), I understand that the California Supreme Court recently denied review (which leaves the Court of Appeal’s decision standing) on a matter involving the sealing of records relating to a really rich guy’s divorce.