Originally Posted By TomSawyer The Seattle Times is starting a series on sealed civil court documents that are protecting doctors, manufacturers, day care providers and others from having the details of the cases against them exposed to the public. The link to the series is <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002845009_seal05m.html" target="_blank">http://seattletimes.nwsource.c om/html/localnews/2002845009_seal05m.html</a> I'll post a few paragraphs below, but I think that sealed court documents are fine when protecting juvenile offenders or the one-time mistakes that people can make. But I don't think court documents should be sealed to protect people or organizations that still intend on selling the service or product that brought about a lawsuit. I'm curious what you all think. Here are some excerpted paragraphs: Four years ago, a lawsuit was filed in King County Superior Court, alleging that a medical device was unsafe. A woman using it wound up in a coma. You'd probably like to know: What's the device? Does anyone in my family use it? Unsafe how? But you can't know. You're not allowed to know. Medtronic, the multibillion-dollar company that makes the device, asked a judge to conceal the whole file from public view — and the judge said OK. Twelve years ago, an Eastside family sued KinderCare, one of the country's largest child-care companies, saying it was responsible for the sexual abuse of a child. You'd like to know: Who was accused of sexual abuse? How was KinderCare involved? Were police notified? But you can't know. That file, too, is sealed — hidden away by a court commissioner who has sealed dozens of cases, stamping his name on one secrecy order after another. Document after document, file after file, has been sealed — and sealed improperly — by the judges and court commissioners of King County Superior Court. A wrongful-death lawsuit against Virginia Mason Medical Center? Sealed. A lawsuit accusing a King County judge of legal malpractice? Sealed. A lawsuit blaming the state's social-services agency for the rape of a 13-year-old girl? Sealed. Since 1990, at least 420 civil suits have been sealed in their entirety, The Seattle Times found. That means everything — from the complaint, which says who's accused of what, to the judgment, which says how the case wound up — has been concealed, locked behind electronic passwords or number-coded keypads that restrict access to computer records and shelved files. These sealed records hold secrets of potential dangers in our medicine cabinets and refrigerators; of molesters in our day-care centers, schools and churches; of unethical lawyers, negligent doctors, dangerous dentists; of missteps by local and state agencies; of misconduct by publicly traded companies into which people sink their savings.
Originally Posted By BlueDevilSF >>But you can't know. You're not allowed to know. Medtronic, the multibillion-dollar company that makes the device, asked a judge to conceal the whole file from public view — and the judge said OK.<< Oh, fun. Medtronic made my pacemaker/ICD. I'd be more worried if it was a Guidant device, though.
Originally Posted By mele <<Twelve years ago, an Eastside family sued KinderCare, one of the country's largest child-care companies, saying it was responsible for the sexual abuse of a child. You'd like to know: Who was accused of sexual abuse? How was KinderCare involved? Were police notified?>> I would definitely like to read about that since my son went to KinderCare (on the Eastside) 12 years ago.
Originally Posted By JeffG I guess I'll be interested to follow more of this series to see what they come up with in their investigation, but the overall tone of the full article struck me as scary sensationalism with little actual information. They cite the high-level subject of a number of product liability or sexual abuse cases, but the whole premise of the article is that they don't actually know the details or outcome of the cases. The article basically ignores the enormous impact that suspicions raised by allegations against a person or product can have, even when the court proceedings ultimately exonerate them. In fact, it actually seems to me that the article is largely >based< on those types of suspicions. A key premise really seemed to be that the public has a right to be "warned" about potential hazards, regardless of whether the court case showed them to be invalid. Certainly, it is possible that as the paper digs deeper into the story they will learn that there really were all kinds of court cases that were sealed when they clearly shouldn't have been, but my first impression is that this is more about selling newspapers than it is about public safety. -Jeff
Originally Posted By jimminy44 I would guess that most of those cases were "settled" without a trial in which they might have been found negligent or at fault. In such civil cases the respondent has still not been legally found to be negligent or at fault by a judge or jury. I am guessing that in such instances, the attorneys can make a motion to seal the case.
