Hicks et al v. PGA Tour, Inc.

Filing 107

ORDER denying 70 Administrative Motion to File Under Seal filed by PGA Tour, Inc. Signed by Judge Vince Chhabria on 2/10/2016. (knm, COURT STAFF) (Filed on 2/10/2016)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

WILLIAM MICHAEL HICKS, et al.,

Case No. 15-cv-00489-VC

Plaintiffs,
ORDER DENYING MOTION TO FILE
UNDER SEAL

v.

Re: Dkt. No. 70

PGA TOUR, INC.,
Defendant.

The defendant's motion to file under seal Exhibits A, B, and C to its request for judicial
notice in support of its motion to dismiss the first amended complaint is denied. The Tour
asserts that its "standard form tournament agreements" must be concealed from the public
because competitors might take advantage of information contained in them. But the Tour
makes this assertion at a high level of abstraction, without explaining, in concrete terms or with
examples, who might take advantage of the information, or how they might do so. (For that
matter, the Court cannot, on its own, conceive of a real-world example in which this would
happen.) Although the defendant's first motion to dismiss was mooted by the parties' stipulation
to allow the plaintiffs to file a second amended complaint, that motion was "more than
tangentially related to the merits of [the] case." Ctr. for Auto Safety v. Chrysler Grp., LLC, 809
F.3d 1092, 1101 (9th Cir. 2016). Accordingly, the Tour has not satisfied the standard for filing
these documents under seal. See id. at 1100-01.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
Dated: February 10, 2016
______________________________________
VINCE CHHABRIA
United States District Judge

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