City of Greenville, Illinois, et al v. Syngenta Crop Protection, LLC, et al
Filing
Filed opinion of the court by Judge Easterbrook. AFFIRMED. Diane P. Wood, Chief Judge; Frank H. Easterbrook, Circuit Judge and David F. Hamilton, Circuit Judge. [6599515-1] [6599515] [13-1626]
<![CDATA[
Case: 13-1626
Document: 36
Filed: 08/20/2014
Pages: 6
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 13-‐‑1626
CITY OF GREENVILLE, ILLINOIS, et al.,
Plaintiffs-‐‑Appellees,
v.
SYNGENTA CROP PROTECTION, LLC, et al.,
Defendants-‐‑Appellees.
Appeal of:
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW & POLICY CENTER and PRAIRIE
RIVERS NETWORK
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Illinois.
No. 10-‐‑cv-‐‑188-‐‑JPG — J. Phil Gilbert, Judge.
____________________
ARGUED SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 — DECIDED AUGUST 20, 2014
____________________
Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and
HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.
EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. The herbicide atrazine is
banned in the European Union but widely used in this na-‐‑
tion. The EPA has decided that it is safe; some environmen-‐‑
Case: 13-1626
2
Document: 36
Filed: 08/20/2014
Pages: 6
No. 13-‐‑1626
talists deem it unsafe. Various Midwestern municipalities
and water boards charged with filtering public drinking
supplies brought this suit against Syngenta, the corporate
family that manufactures and distributes the chemical.
Those claims were settled. The merits are now irrelevant, but
during discovery Syngenta produced many documents. Two
environmental groups intervened to assert that the public is
entitled to see them.
The intervenors want the court to disclose exhibits filed
with plaintiffs’ response to Syngenta’s motion to dismiss.
Many contain internal emails and business deliberations that
Syngenta wants to keep private. In a flawed attempt to com-‐‑
ply with a protective order shielding discovery materials,
plaintiffs had filed the response and its exhibits under seal.
But the protective order did not apply to materials filed in
connection with a dispositive motion. Pointing to this limita-‐‑
tion, the district court eventually unsealed 123 of the exhib-‐‑
its, preserving the seal on 242 that are either legitimately
confidential or had not been cited in plaintiffs’ papers. (Per-‐‑
haps the court should have unsealed everything, given the
protective order’s limited scope, but the intervenors have
forfeited such an argument by not raising it.)
The district judge asked plaintiffs why they had filed, but
not relied on or even cited, documents that had been pro-‐‑
duced in discovery under the protective order. Plaintiffs did
not offer an explanation. The judge then elected to ignore the
uncited documents, announcing that he would “not consult
them in making [his] rulings”. City of Greenville v. Syngenta
Crop Protection, Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79755 at *6–7 (S.D.
Ill. July 21, 2011). See Northwestern National Insurance Co. v.
Baltes, 15 F.3d 660, 662–63 (7th Cir. 1994). Having decided
Case: 13-1626
No. 13-‐‑1626
Document: 36
Filed: 08/20/2014
Pages: 6
3
not to read these documents, the judge observed that they
could not have affected his decision and held that they need
not be disclosed to the public, because they “can shed no
light on the functioning of the Court and the basis for its de-‐‑
cisions”. 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79755 at *6. Contending that
this approach undermines the presumption of public access
to judicial records, intervenors want us to order the uncited
documents unsealed.
Discovery material can be shielded from the public eye.
Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart, 467 U.S. 20 (1984). Once filed
with the court, however, “[d]ocuments that affect the dispo-‐‑
sition of federal litigation are presumptively open to public
view … unless a statute, rule, or privilege justifies confiden-‐‑
tiality.” In re Specht, 622 F.3d 697, 701 (7th Cir. 2010). This
transparency “enable[s] interested members of the public …
to know who’s using the courts, to understand judicial deci-‐‑
sions, and to monitor the judiciary’s performance of its du-‐‑
ties.” Goesel v. Boley International (H.K.) Ltd., 738 F.3d 831, 833
(7th Cir. 2013) (chambers opinion) (collecting citations). In
short, litigants who enjoy publicly subsidized dispute reso-‐‑
lution should expect public oversight. See Union Oil Co. v.
Leavell, 220 F.3d 562, 568 (7th Cir. 2000).
Tension between secrecy of discovery and disclosure of
the record is inevitable; parties are tempted to use the latter
to undermine the former. To resolve this tension, we have
limited the presumption of public access to materials that
affect judicial decisions. District court judges need not re-‐‑
lease every document that has “crept into the record”. Goesel,
738 F.3d at 833. That would eviscerate Seattle Times. Requir-‐‑
ing judges to vet every document in the record to determine
whether it is covered by a privilege or some other basis of
Case: 13-1626
4
Document: 36
Filed: 08/20/2014
Pages: 6
No. 13-‐‑1626
confidentiality would needlessly increase the district courts’
workload. The increased risk of releasing commercially val-‐‑
uable information to the public also would induce litigants
to resist disclosure in the first instance.
Nevertheless, the intervenors ask us to extend the pre-‐‑
sumption of public disclosure to every non-‐‑privileged doc-‐‑
ument that reaches a courthouse. For support, they point to
dicta from Bond v. Utreras, 585 F.3d 1061 (7th Cir. 2009), sug-‐‑
gesting that once documents are filed they “have been ‘used
in [a court] proceeding,’ Fed. R. Civ. P. 5(d), and consequent-‐‑
ly the possibility exists that they could influence or underpin
the judicial decision”. Id. at 1075. Rule 5(d) permits a docu-‐‑
ment to be filed only once it has been “used” in the proceed-‐‑
ing. Building on this, Bond entertained the possibility that
the fact of filing might allow us to presume the judicial reli-‐‑
ance necessary to the presumption of public access. See also
id. at 1073 (“[T]he public has a presumptive right to access
discovery materials that are filed with the court [or] used in
a judicial proceeding”). But Bond did not have occasion to
adopt this analysis. The case involved materials that had
never been filed; accordingly we held that the intervenor-‐‑
appellee was not entitled to their disclosure.
Bond’s dicta must be measured against our repeated
statements that the presumption of public access turns on
what the judge did, not on what the parties filed. The docu-‐‑
ments that our intervenors seek were not reviewed and
deemed irrelevant, a step that could reveal something valu-‐‑
able about the judicial process; instead the district judge ex-‐‑
plicitly declined to consider them after plaintiffs failed to of-‐‑
fer a justification for their filing. Perhaps Rule 5(d) allows
“use” to be inferred from filing when the district judge is si-‐‑
Case: 13-1626
No. 13-‐‑1626
Document: 36
Filed: 08/20/2014
Pages: 6
5
lent, but filing is not invariably enough under the standard
enunciated in Union Oil and Specht. Public access depends
on whether a document “influenc[ed] or underpin[ned] the
judicial decision”. Baxter International, Inc. v. Abbott Laborato-‐‑
ries, 297 F.3d 544, 545 (7th Cir. 2002). The fact of filing may
support an inference of influence. (It suggests at least that
the document was at the judge’s fingertips.) But not always,
or Seattle Times’ protection of discovery materials would be
toothless. And certainly not here, where plaintiffs could not
(or would not) explain why they had filed the documents,
and the judge did not even look at them. The public has no
right to access these documents, which cannot conceivably
aid the understanding of judicial decisionmaking.
That we need to address this question at all reflects a
shortcoming in the federal judiciary’s docket-‐‑tracking soft-‐‑
ware, rather than some legal snarl. As the district judge rec-‐‑
ognized, trial courts usually remedy errant filing by striking
the unnecessary material from the record. The judge
thought, however, that he could not strike the uncited exhib-‐‑
its in this case because plaintiffs had incorporated them into
a much larger document that they filed using the court’s e-‐‑
filing system. The judiciary’s software does not provide a
means to erase subparts from a consolidated filing. Since the
uncited documents that intervenors seek were intermingled
with hundreds of other exhibits, the district court thought it
too difficult to cull the docket. Yet although it may be hard,
even impossible, to delete a document from the docket-‐‑
tracking system, it remains possible to strike it from the rec-‐‑
ord; that requires only a judicial order. Whether a copy of
the file remains on a hard drive is irrelevant to the principles
justifying public access to judicial records. We hope that in
the future district judges will not assume that limitations of
Case: 13-1626
6
Document: 36
Filed: 08/20/2014
Pages: 6
No. 13-‐‑1626
docket-‐‑tracking software curtail their authority over the con-‐‑
tents of the record. Software must reflect the judge’s deci-‐‑
sions; it does not control them. This court regularly returns,
unfiled, irrelevant documents needlessly tendered; that pro-‐‑
cess makes it unnecessary to decide whether a seal that was
entered under Seattle Times should be removed. District
judges have the same power.
We recognize that policing the boundaries of public
oversight adds to the labor of trial judges. To ease the bur-‐‑
den, the district courts have at their disposal the procedures
of Fed. R. Civ. P. 53 and 28 U.S.C. §636(b)(2), which permit
the appointment of special masters to sort through swollen
filings and identify material that does not belong in the rec-‐‑
ord. The district judge in this case appropriately referred to a
magistrate judge the question whether some documents,
properly in the record, are legitimately confidential. (The
judge did not refer the uncited documents at issue in this
appeal.) Appointment of a special master allocates the cost
of remediation to the party that tried to undermine Seattle
Times by filing documents irrelevant to the issues in the suit.
AFFIRMED
]]>
Disclaimer: Justia Dockets & Filings provides public litigation records from the federal appellate and district courts. These filings and docket sheets should not be considered findings of fact or liability, nor do they necessarily reflect the view of Justia.
Why Is My Information Online?
