The key to sealing was that the parties all agreed to conceal the evidence. The key to unsealing was that there was no opposition.
In Tillman v. Ally Fin. Inc., No. 2:16-cv-313-FtM-99CM, 2018 WL 1449578 (M.D. Fla. January 8, 2018), the lawyers provided the Court with an agreed secrecy order, which the Court signed in this case. "The Protective Order was entered to protect Ally and its vendors’ non-public proprietary information." Tillman v. Ally Fin. Inc., No. 2:16-cv-313-FtM-99CM, 2018 WL 1449578, at *1 n.1 (M.D. Fla. January 8, 2018). Rule 26 is the "good cause" rule for protective orders, and Rule 5.2 is the "good cause" rule for sealing evidence. Neither rule speaks in terms of "non-public proprietary information," but that is what the lawyers wrote in their agreement and that is what a judge in the case signed into an order.
They were for it until they were against it, it seems. After the evidence was concealed, they all decided that it should be unsealed. Ally filed the motion. The other parties agreed not to oppose the unsealing at that point, including the people suing over the evidence. Since they were all on the same side once again, the Court was on their side also, and the same evidence that had once been sealed because it had to be concealed, now not so much. The Court granted the unopposed motion to un-conceal the evidence.
We know what the case was about from previous unofficial reports including on Westlaw. This case was filed as a class action under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The named plaintiff alleged that the defendant Ally, the world's largest financer of automobiles, kept calling him even after Ally's callers were told that the individual they were looking for was not at that number (to paraphrase Obi-wan Kenobi: "This is not the one you're looking for") and even after they were allegedly asked to cease and desist. In his complaint, the plaintiff alleged that his claim should be certified as a class action on behalf of people who received "non-consented calls" from Ally within the past four years before the plaintiff filed his complaint.
So, the "vendors' non-public information" included information on those practices, if any such evidence existed anywhere it seems.
One take-away from this story might legitimately be something like this: Rules may or may not be binding when there are unopposed agreements to take care of things instead.
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