Wood et al v. Mutual Redevelopment Houses, Inc. et al

Filing 326

ORDER granting 325 Letter Motion to Seal. GRANTED. The documents at issue contains highly personal information and shall be filed under seal. The Clerk of Court is directed to mail a copy of this order to Plaintiffs pro se. SO ORDERED.. (Signed by Judge Analisa Torres on 7/19/2021) (kv) Transmission to Docket Assistant Clerk for processing.

Case 1:14-cv-07535-AT-DCF Document 326 Filed 07/19/21 Page 1 of 5

BRAVERMAN I GRE
A PROFESSIONAL CORPOR

Via ECF
Honorable Analisa Torres
United States District Judge
Southern District of New York
500 Pearl Street
New York, New York 10007
Re:

7/19/2021

July 16, 2021

Wood, et ano. v. Mutual Redevelopment Houses, Inc., et al.
U.S.D.C. S.D.N.Y. Case No. 14-CV-7535 (AT) (DCF)

Dear Judge Torres:
We represent the Defendants and write with respect to the Court’s July 12, 2021 Order (the
“July 12 Order,” ECF 324) requiring the Plaintiff to file redacted opposition papers to Defendants’
pending motion for summary judgment (the “Motion”) on or before July 19, 2021. In the July 12
Order, the Court advised that: “Failure to comply with this order will result in Plaintiffs’ opposition
papers being filed on the public docket.”
We write to respectfully request that, should the Plaintiffs’ opposition papers (the
“Opposition”) be publicly filed, certain specific documents identified herein containing personal
or sensitive information be redacted, sealed or stricken. We further request that, should the
Plaintiffs submit revised, redacted Opposition papers, that these specific documents be among the
redactions, and that if they are not, the Court should order them to be redacted, sealed, or stricken.
The primary reason for this request is that the Plaintiffs elected to file the entirety of
Defendants’ document discovery response, in excess of 10,000 pages, as Exhibit 26 to the
Opposition. The discovery response contained a substantial amount of personal, tax and financial
information regarding unit owners of and applicants to Defendant Mutual Redevelopment Houses,
Inc. (“Mutual”) which is irrelevant to the Opposition and otherwise inappropriate for public
disclosure.
Second Circuit Standards for Sealing of Court-filed Documents
In its 2020 decision Mirlis v. Greer, 952 F.3d 51, 58-60 (2d Cir. 2020), the Second Circuit
set forth the three steps a court should take to determine whether a document may be sealed, or
whether instead the “potent and fundamental right of public access” attaches to a document. Mirlis
holds that a court must: (1) determine whether the document is a “judicial document,” i.e. one that
is relevant and useful in the performance of the court’s judicial function; (2) determine the weight
of the presumption of access in light of the role and value of document in the exercise of Article
III judicial power; and (3) identify and balance the factors counseling against disclosure and weigh
them against the presumption of access. Documents may be sealed only where a court makes
110 EAST 42ND STREET, 17TH FLOOR, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10017
[phone] FAX: [phone] WWW.BRAVERLAW.NET

Case 1:14-cv-07535-AT-DCF Document 326 Filed 07/19/21 Page 2 of 5
Honorable Analisa Torres
July 16, 2021
Page 2
specific, on the record findings that closure is essential. Lugosch v. Pyramid Co. of Onondaga,
435 F.3d 110, 120 (2d Cir. 2006).
Under the first Mirlis step, the Opposition documents should be considered judicial
documents because they were submitted for consideration in deciding a summary motion.
Lugosch, 435 F.3d at 121-22.
Under the second Mirlis step: “The general and deeply rooted rule is that the presumptive
right of access is afforded ‘strong weight’ when applied to documents that play a central role in
‘determining litigants’ substantive rights—conduct at the heart of Article III.’” Mirlis, 952 F.3d at
60 (quoting United States v. Amodeo, 71 F.3d 1044, 1049 (2d Cir. 1995)). However:
Where testimony or documents play only a negligible role in the performance of
Article III duties, the weight of the presumption is low and amounts to little more
than a prediction of public access absent a countervailing reason. Documents that
play no role in the performance of Article III functions, such as those passed
between the parties in discovery, lie entirely beyond the presumption's reach.
Amedeo, 71 F.3d at 1050; see also Brown v. Maxwell, 929 F.3d 41, 49–50 (2d Cir. 2019)
(distinguishing between presumption of public access for documents submitted in discovery, and
those used for adjudicating a motion). In assessing documents under the second Mirlis step, the
Court should consider whether they were filed because they have distinct relevance to the legal
issues raised in the summary judgment motion, or whether they were filed merely because they
were exchanged in discovery.
In the third Mirlis step, “the court must identify all of the factors that legitimately counsel
against disclosure of the judicial document, and balance those factors against the weight properly
accorded the presumption of access.” 952 F.3d at 59. “Foremost among the competing concerns
that a court weighing disclosure must consider is ‘the privacy interest of the person resisting
disclosure.’” Id. at 61 (quoting Amedeo, 71 F.3d at 1050).
Beyond redaction or sealing, under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(f), the Court may strike “any
redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous matter.”
As set forth below, applying the Mirlis test to each of the documents identified herein
demonstrates that they should be redacted, sealed, or stricken.
Documents that Should Be Redacted or Sealed
Exhibit 26 to the Opposition consists of documents Bates numbered D00001 through
D10917, which were produced by Defendants in response to Plaintiffs’ document discovery
requests. Two groups of documents contained in Exhibit 26, as well as several other documents
submitted by Plaintiffs, contain personal information that should be redacted, sealed or stricken.

4814-9091-9666, v. 2

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Honorable Analisa Torres
July 16, 2021
Page 3
In response to Plaintiffs’ document requests, Defendants produced, as documents D0779810827, a substantial number of files consisting of application documents from non-parties seeking
to purchase apartments at Mutual. These documents contain detailed financial and personal
information concerning applicants, including income tax returns, personal background
investigation and credit reports, reports of home visitations to applicants, applications containing
income and employment information, and other private documents. These documents were
submitted to or obtained by Mutual with the expectation that they would be used only for the
purposes of evaluating apartment applications, and otherwise remain strictly confidential. 1
These documents concerning the financial and other qualifications of non-party applicants
are irrelevant to, or at most bear highly tangentially, on the central issue in Defendants’ summary
judgment motion, whether the Plaintiffs demonstrated that they were qualified purchasers by
compliance with Mutual’s procedures to demonstrate that they met Mutual’s financial
qualifications. Because they have little to no bearing on the determination of the litigants’ rights,
and they contain highly private and confidential material, documents D07798-10827 should be
redacted, sealed or stricken.
Defendants also produced, as documents D00821-07012, Mutual’s internal files
concerning complaints, actions and proceedings with respect to individual Co-op unit owners, most
commonly documents concerning nuisance, conduct, or hoarding complaints. These documents
include complaint records, photographs of individual apartments, and memoranda and reports
concerning individual unit owners. Complaints concerning existing individual unit owners and
their conduct are entirely irrelevant to the issues raised herein regarding the financial qualification
of a prospective apartment purchaser, and the documents contain personal and potentially
embarrassing information about non-parties. As such, documents D00821-07012 should be
redacted, sealed or stricken.
Should the entire document range D07798-10827 not be kept private, the following
documents within that range should be redacted or sealed for the indicated reasons: D01582-1635,
documents concerning a guardianship proceeding; D02417-2423, income tax return; D4517,
drivers license with birth date and ID numbers; D03853, 3834, 4141, 4710, 4952, 5341, 6477,
6482, 6484, and 6518, checks with unredacted bank account numbers. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 5.2.
Plaintiffs’ Exhibit 13 consists of subpoenaed documents concerning Mutual’s application
to refinance the underlying mortgage on the entire project. Within that Exhibit are documents
numbered WF00001902-1947, which contain personal credit reports for individual Mutual officers
or directors obtained in connection with Mutual’s application. This highly personal information
has no relevance whatsoever to anything at issue in this case, and should be redacted, sealed or
stricken.

Although certain of these documents were redacted prior to production to exclude social security numbers,
financial and credit account information, and certain other extremely personal information, cf. Fed. R. Civ. P. 5.2,
these limited redactions do not change that remaining information is personal and confidential, and should not be
publicly disclosed.

1

4814-9091-9666, v. 2

Case 1:14-cv-07535-AT-DCF Document 326 Filed 07/19/21 Page 4 of 5
Honorable Analisa Torres
July 16, 2021
Page 4
Plaintiffs’ Exhibit 20 is a schedule, apparently prepared by Plaintiffs, that lists, among other
things, the incomes of individually named apartment applicants, apparently derived from the
applications in the range D07798-10827 of Exhibit 26 discussed above. There is no reason these
confidentially-submitted individual applicants’ incomes should be publicly disclosed, and for the
reasons discussed above, this document should be redacted, sealed or stricken.
Plaintiffs’ Exhibit 25 is an Abstract of Driver History Record for Carmen N. Angelico
obtained by Plaintiff, which lists only events dating back to the 1980s. Apparently, this document
was submitted because Defendant Carmen N. Santiago a/k/a Carmen N. Angelico uses (and has
used for the past 55 years) her birth name professionally as a Mutual employee, but has her married
name on listed on Mutual’s payroll records. (See ECF 321). This document has no bearing on any
issue in this case, and contains only irrelevant personal information, and as such should be
redacted, sealed or stricken.
For these reasons, in the event that the Court should file the Plaintiffs’ previously submitted
Opposition on the public docket, the Mutual Defendants respectfully request that the foregoing
documents be redacted, sealed or stricken. Further, should the Plaintiffs submit revised Opposition
papers which do not have the foregoing documents redacted, sealed or stricken, that the Court
should Order that they be redacted, sealed, or stricken before they are filed on the public docket.
We thank the Court for its consideration.
Respectfully,
/s/ William J. Geller
cc:

Tzvee Wood & Andrea Malester

4814-9091-9666, v. 2

William J. Geller

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