eLessons Learned - Full Article

Federal Judge in Illinois Denies Media Group’s Motion to Intervene Under FRCP 24(b)

Jan 28, 2013
eLessons, In-House Counsel, Outside Counsel

    Authored By: Lauren Winchester

    Citation: Estate of Carlock v. Williamson, No. 08-CV-3075, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7596 (C.D. Ill. Jan. 26, 2011).

    Employee/Employer Implicated: Counsel

    e-Lesson Learned: Although the right to public access of court proceedings is important, when documents that should have been protected by the attorney client privilege are inadvertently disclosed in discovery and then sealed, the press is not able to assert that right and intervene.

    Tweet This: District Court Denies Press Group’s Motion to Intervene under Rule 24(b) Because Sealed Documents were Inadvertent Disclosures.

Despite the importance of the general right to public access of court proceedings, a federal judge in Illinois ruled that a media group could not intervene in a lawsuit because, although it had standing, intervention would cause undue prejudice.

The plaintiff in the underlying suit is the estate of Amon Carlock, Jr., who died while incarcerated at the Sangamon County Jail in 2007. Mr. Carlock’s estate filed a § 1983 suit against the jail alleging excessive force and inadequate medical treatment during his incarceration. Plaintiff further alleged that physicians at the jail failed to monitor Mr. Carlock’s blood sugar levels and provide insulin despite the fact that he was an insulin dependent diabetic. On the day Mr. Carlock was to be transported to the hospital, Correction Officers tasered him and applied force to Mr. Carlock’s back, compressing his chest and causing him to stop breathing. Mr. Carlock had no pulse when the ambulance arrived and was pronounced dead several hours later.

During discovery, plaintiff believed that defendants had failed to preserve ESI, audio, and video relating to the above events. Acting on this belief, plaintiff filed a motion for sanctions for spoliation of evidence, attaching several exhibits that defendants had produced during discovery.

After seeing the attachments, defendants filed an emergency motion asking the court to strike the motion and attachments or, alternatively, to seal the documents. They claimed that some of the attachments were inadvertently disclosed communications covered by the attorney client privilege. The magistrate judge issued a temporary order to seal the attachments.

In response to the judge’s order sealing the documents, GateHouse Media Illinois Holdings II, Inc. (“GateHouse Media”) filed a motion to intervene pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(b) to oppose the sealing of judicial documents and requesting authorization to copy and inspect the papers.

Under FRCP 24(b), the court can allow anyone to intervene in the litigation who has a claim or defense that shares a common question of law or fact with the main action. The court must use its discretion to determine whether the intervention unduly delays or prejudices the adjudication.

First, defendants argued that GateHouse Media did not have standing to intervene because there was no public right of access to the documents they desire to seal. The court found that the fact that defendants asked the court to seal certain documents constituted the simple facts necessary to determine that GateHouse Media had standing.

As for undue prejudice, defendants argued that they would be unduly prejudiced because the documents in question would not have been filed but for plaintiff’s alleged discovery violation. Therefore, GateHouse Media’s claimed right to public access is to documents that should never have been filed in the first place because they are protected under attorney client privilege.

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court agreed that some of the documents filed by the plaintiff should never have been publically filed. Further, the court found that plaintiff violated Rule 26(b)(5)(B) because defendants did not waive the privilege, and plaintiff had a duty not to disclose the information publically until the claim of privilege was resolved.

Because defendants have the right to have documents they claim are subject to attorney client privilege reviewed by the court in camera before they are publicly filed, the court found that allowing GateHouse Media to intervene would unduly prejudice defendants. Therefore, the court denied GateHouse Media’s motion to intervene despite the importance the court placed on the right of public access to court proceedings.

 

Lauren Winchester is a student at Seton Hall University School of Law (Class of 2012), where she serves as an articles editor for the Law Review and a research fellow for the Center for Policy and Research. Lauren received a B.S. in Political Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009. After graduating from Seton Hall Law, Lauren will work as an associate at Fox Rothschild LLP.

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