A Reporter Has a Sealed Document. What Now?

Do not confirm it, do not characterize it, and do not help with it. Tell counsel the moment the call comes, because a protective order has obligations that are counsel’s to meet, not yours. The reporter may publish anyway; that is their decision and their outlet’s. Your job is to be certain it did not come from your side, to say nothing that adds to it, and to have the public record ready for the story that is going to run with or without you.

The first ten minutes

Say that you cannot discuss material under seal and that you will not confirm what the reporter has. Do not ask to see it. Do not say whether it is accurate. Hang up and call the lawyer on the case, who will know what the order requires: notice to the court, notice to the other side, or nothing yet. Then write down the time of the call and what was said. If the material did come from your side, that is a problem for counsel today, not for communications next week.

What you can say

What is already in the public record. The complaint, the unsealed filings, the schedule, the public rulings. If the reporter is going to run a story, the one thing you can do inside the rules is make sure the public part of the record is in it, accurately, so the sealed fragment is not the whole story. Nothing beyond that, and nothing about the sealed material itself, however much the reporter already knows.

Why I never go near it

I share discovery material with a reporter only where no protective order, court rule or Rule 3.6 limits it, only what is already outside any order, and only with counsel’s written sign-off on the material and the timing. A sealed document is the opposite case on every count. The appearance problem is as real as the substantive one: a plaintiff side that is seen anywhere near a leak loses the credibility the case depends on. When discovery can go to a reporter, and when it can’t →