FEDERAL COURTHOUSE, Aug 18 – Play ball!
Inner City Press has moved to unseal courthouse records
tied to warrantless wiretaps, seizure warrants on
international tankers, a Lockerbie bombing prosecution,
and the FDIC's own regulatory secrecy. This week, it's the
Chicago Cubs.
Inner City Press's objection
to blanket sealing in Chicago Cubs Baseball Club, LLC
v. Dunican has been docketed as Entry 189, and the case
itself, four years and 189 docket entries deep, is exactly
the kind of only-in-Chicago dispute that deserves a public
airing: a trademark fight between the Cubs and Rooftop by
the Firehouse, one of the surviving rooftop bars across
from Wrigley Field's outfield walls, over what those
rooftops can and can't say, show, or sell in connection
with the ballpark next door.
Along the way, both sides moved to seal
large swaths of their summary judgment briefing —
including, per Defendants' own filing, "discussions
relating to modifications made and considered to Wrigley
Field" itself. That is the detail worth pausing on.
Wrigley Field is not just a piece of litigation evidence;
it is one of the more beloved, publicly recognized
structures in American sports, a National Historic
Landmark-adjacent fixture of Chicago's North Side since
1914. What gets changed about it, and what a rooftop bar
operator and Major League Baseball's Cubs organization
fight over behind a sealed filing, is not a private matter
between two corporate litigants — it is the kind of thing
fans, neighbors, and this outlet's own readers have a real
interest in, sealed protective order or not.
Inner City Press's objection notes
that Defendants had already filed a redacted public
version of the same reply brief, proving redaction was
achievable; that the underlying exhibits cited come from a
Chicago City Council meeting transcript, a Condé Nast
Traveler article, and an MLB.com piece, all public
already; and that Defendants themselves stated in their
own motion that they "disagree with all of Plaintiff's
Confidential designations," even while complying with them
pending the Court's ruling. In other words: even the party
doing the sealing doesn't think it should be sealed.
But the judge doesn't care - in a response
at odds with other judges and Districts all over the country.
Is it something about Chicago? Or NDIL?
Four days after the objection was
docketed, Judge Coleman ruled — not on the merits, but on
standing itself. Her minute entry states: "The Court will
not rule on motions or objections from non-parties to this
action. The Court will handle matters and direct Defendants
to further specify the scope and nature of the confidential
information under seal where appropriate." That last
sentence suggests the underlying access problem may get
fixed anyway, on the Court's own initiative — but it does so
while declining to acknowledge Inner City Press's filing had
any role in prompting it, or any standing to be heard going
forward. That is a sharper line than this project has run
into even in districts that ultimately denied relief: Judges
in California, Colorado, and Washington, D.C. have engaged
with, ruled on, and in several cases granted press access
requests this year using the identical posture — a non-party
filing something short of full intervention. Whether the
outcome here would have been different had the filing been
captioned and styled specifically as a Motion to Intervene
under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(b), rather than an
Objection by Non-Party, is an open question this outlet
intends to test directly the next time a comparable filing
goes into this District. Watch this site.
