Agropur, Inc. v. Scoular Company, The

• Court: District Court, D. Minnesota
• Decided: August 20, 2018
• Docket: 0:17-cv-01247
• Status: Unknown

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA

Agropur, Inc.,

Plaintiff/Counter- Case No. 17-cv-1247 (JNE/SER) Defendant,

v. ORDER

The Scoular Company,

Defendant/Counter- Claimant.

Third-Party Plaintiff,

v.

Southeast Bottling & Beverage Company,

Third-Party Defendant.

STEVEN E. RAU, United States Magistrate Judge This case comes before the Court on Defendant The Scoular Company’s (“Scoular”) Motion for Further Consideration of Sealing [Doc. No. 101], which the Court grants. “There is a common law right of access to judicial records, which includes the public’s right to access documents that are submitted to the Court and that form the basis for judicial decisions.” Skky, LLC v. Facebook, Inc., 191 F. Supp. 3d 977, 980 (D. Minn. 2016) (Wright, J.) (internal quotation marks omitted). “This right of access is not absolute, but requires a weighing of competing interests.” Webster Groves Sch. Dist. v. Pulitzer Publ’g Co., 898 F.2d 1371, 1376 (8th Cir. 1990). Specifically, this Court “must consider the degree to which sealing a judicial record would interfere with the interests served by the common-law right of access and balance that interference against the salutary interests served by maintaining confidentiality of the information sought to be sealed.” IDT Corp. v. eBay, 709 F.3d 1220, 1223 (8th Cir. 2013). Scoular seeks the sealing of one document [Doc. No. 75] that was submitted in connection

with its Motion for Partial Summary Judgment [Doc. No. 72]. (Scoular’s Mem. of Law in Supp. of Mot. for Further Consideration of Sealing) [Doc. No. 102 at 1–2]. The parties recently agreed to settle this case. See (Minute Entry Dated Aug. 16, 2018) [Doc. No. 109]. Therefore, the Motion for Partial Summary Judgment will not be adjudicated by the Court, and the sealed document will not be used in a judicial decision. Accordingly, the public’s right to access the sealed document is limited. See Krueger v. Ameriprise Fin., Inc., No. 11-cv-2781 (SRN/JSM), 2014 WL 12597948, at *9 (D. Minn. Oct. 14, 2014) (Mayeron, Mag. J.) (“[O]nly those documents that are relevant to and integrally involved in the resolution of the merits of a case are judicial records to which the presumption of public access attaches.”). Therefore, the Court grants Scoular’s motion. Based on all the files, records, and proceedings herein, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that

Defendant The Scoular Company’s Motion for Further Consideration of Sealing [Doc. No. 101] is GRANTED.

Dated: August 20, 2018

s/Steven E. Rau STEVEN E. RAU United States Magistrate Judge