The Latest Breaking News from Doe

From the Seventh Circuit decision Jan. 27 in Roe v. Dettelbach, by Judge Diane Wood and joined by Judges David Hamilton and Amy St. Eve: This suit is about a person's right to have a gun part called a "drop-in auto sear." John Roe, litigating under a pseudonym to avoid…

Plaintiff, a Republican political operative, had sued the ACU president for allegedly groping him: In his time involved with the Republican Party, plaintiff "has served political campaigns and political committees as a field coordinator, field director, grassroots director, and political director, among others." While working for one of these campaigns…

Filing accuses the actor and producer of sexual battery, sexual assault and sex with a minor

From Doe v. Mid-American Apartment Communities, Inc., decided Wednesday by Magistrate Judge Christopher Ray (S.D. Ga.): The Court's prior Order explained that "[a]nonymous pleading is the exception to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 10(a), which requires every party to be named in the complaint." It also explained that "[t]he ultimate…

From Doe v. City of N.Y., decided Wednesday by Judge Laura Taylor Swain (S.D.N.Y.): Courts within this Circuit have tended to treat a motion to seal as a judicial document that is entitled to a strong presumption of public access. McGill v. Univ. of Rochester, No. 10-CV-6697, 2013 WL 5951930,…

Appellate briefs need to be treated as public documents, and (I argued) shouldn't be "provisionally" sealed for months or years without findings that such sealing (or, more often, redaction) is genuinely necessary.

From Judge Dan Polster's opinion today in Koe v. Univ. Hospitals Health Sys., Inc. (N.D. Ohio): Plaintiff states that he was a resident physician in the Case Western Reserve University/University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center residency program beginning in June 2019. He also states that he is a qualified individual with…

"The allegedly defamatory nature of this statement is the implication that Plaintiff holds itself out as a local business when it is not. But truth is an affirmative defense to defamation under Delaware law, and the ... Declaration [submitted by Avas] does not deny that Plaintiff maintains call centers abroad…

I've blogged a lot recently about limits on pseudonymous litigation, and readers will have gathered that I think such litigation should generally not be allowed. But "generally" isn't "always" (much more on that here), nor do I think that it should be always. (I explained in my post about Doe…