The Denver Post is fighting a New York law firm’s effort to seal a defamation trial in Arapahoe County.
The Post filed an objection Friday to a motion by Leeds Morelli & Brown to seal the trial, which stems from a dispute between the firm and clients it represented in a class-action case against Nextel Communications.
Experts in First Amendment law said closing of an entire trial is extremely rare, though it’s not unusual for certain documents and testimony to be sealed.
“I have not encountered an effort, much less a successful request, to seal a civil-lawsuit trial (in Colorado) in all the years that I’ve practiced, which is over 20 years,” said Bruce Jones, a First Amendment specialist and lawyer at Holland & Hart.
Leeds Morelli, a small but well-known litigator in employee-discrimination cases based in Carle Place, N.Y., sued New Jersey lawyer Angela Roper and former Nextel worker Doris Brewer of Denver for defamation and invasion of privacy in 2004.
The firm claims that Roper published information from a confidential settlement that Nextel reached with the former workers and discussed those details with a Post reporter in 2003.
Roper had represented Brewer and another former Nextel worker in their suit against Leeds Morelli in 2000. They claimed that the firm reached a secret agreement with Nextel under which the firm received $7.5 million and 587 workers received $5.9 million.
In its motion to seal the trial in its defamation case, Leeds Morelli argues that it shouldn’t be subjected again to a violation of its privacy.
“The thrust of what our clients are complaining about is that they entered into a confidential settlement agreement and that the defendants ran roughshod over that and have violated their privacy,” said Jay Horowitz, Leeds Morelli’s attorney in Denver.
The Post argued that the First Amendment does not protect the firm’s privacy at trial, and that the information it is trying to protect has already been publicly disclosed.
The trial was to begin next Monday, but the start was postponed indefinitely.
