(Photo: Shutterstock.com)

The house at 10 Spring Forest Court in the ritzy Baltimore suburb of Owings Mills looks beautiful in the photos.

Owned by Richard Kurland, the founder and CEO of Employment Background Investigations, its façade is stone, with a soaring portico and in-ground pool—7,000 square feet on two landscaped acres.

“Elegant impeccably maintained 5BR, 5/2BA luxury home,” according to a 2017 real estate listing. It's got custom built-ins and a grand foyer, a rec room, a game room, a wet bar, a theatre and a gym. Aside from some questionable choices in window coverings, I'd be ready to move right in.

What the ad didn't mention: Catastrophic water damage and black mold from a faulty HVAC system, as well as other leaks. The mold was so bad the family had to move out—plus the HVAC was sucking in fiberglass and spewing it into the air.

Kurland and his wife sued their insurance company in 2015, arguing that they were shortchanged on their claims. The case settled last year.

But that's not the part I find interesting—it's what happened next.

Represented by Kramon & Graham and Merlin Law Group, the Kurlands last week asked the court to seal the 3-year-old case.

“Even though plaintiffs remediated the water damage and mold with documentation confirming same, plaintiffs cannot get a realtor or buyer due to the postings on-line regarding this lawsuit,” they wrote. “Plaintiffs respectfully request that the court seal the record in this case instantly. Plaintiffs would take this court's order to each search engine company and each site owner to have the posts concerning this suit removed.”

First of all—I looked. There are very few posts about the lawsuit. If you happen to know the case caption—Kurland v. Ace—you can find a few documents. But if you just search the address or the owners' names, zilch.

Second—They'd need to tell a prospective buyer about the damage anyway. If they neglected to mention it and got caught, the new buyers could sue them. Also, it'd be a super-jerk move to try to fob off your lemon of a house on an unsuspecting buyer.

But there's a bigger issue. My number one pet peeve as a journalist who writes about litigation is that courts are far too willing to seal documents or dockets.

I see it all the time in business disputes between private parties. Why, for example, was such a big chunk of the docket in the fight between Facebook and ZeniMax over the Oculus Rift technology sealed? (When ZeniMax lawyers from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom filed a motion asking that some documents be unsealed, Facebook counsel responded by asking that ZeniMax's motion to unseal be sealed.)

I understand redacting trade secrets or other confidential information, but to close off so much of a fight simply because the parties prefer it that way strikes me as an abdication of a court's duty to the public.

Here, U.S. District Chief Judge James Bredar in Maryland took a strong stand for transparency.

“A party's mere desire to keep information confidential does not suffice,” he wrote.

The bar to seal depends on the type of document, he noted. Filings for or against summary judgment must pass a First Amendment test, and proponents must “proffer a compelling government interest and must show that the proposed sealing is narrowly tailored to serve that interest.”

Bredar found the plaintiffs even failed to meet the lower standard for non-dispositive documents.

The Kurlands “chose to air their grievance in a public forum, the records of which are public and presumed to be transparent to the public,” the judge wrote.

He continued, “That the injurious allegations have been of public interest is borne out by their presence on the internet. The unfortunate consequence of plaintiffs' decision to seek justice for the damage done to their house is that the allegations have been reported but not the plaintiffs' apparently successful efforts at remediation.”

“Even so,” he concluded, “the public interest still outweighs plaintiffs' interest in selling their house.”

By the way, I have another thought on why the house hasn't sold—and it's not because the court docs are on the internet.

According to online real estate records, the Kurlands bought the house for just over $1 million in late 2011, and listed it for just under $2 million in 2016 before pulling it off the market a year later. That'd be a mighty big appreciation even without the leaks and structural damage and black mold.

The house next door—which looks like a castle—is currently listed for $1.495 million.

 

Shout-Out: Simpson Stops UBS Investor Class Cert

Lawyers at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett on Monday shut down a bid for class cert by unhappy investors who bought UBS Puerto Rico Closed End Funds.

Represented by Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann; Grant & Eisenhofer; and Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, the investors said that UBS—their broker‐dealer—breached the client agreement by failing to perform suitability analyses in connection with the investment.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein in the Southern District of New York declined to certify the class. “Whether an investment is suitable for a particular client is an inherently individualized inquiry; it depends on the unique characteristics of both the investor and the investment at a particular point in time,” he wrote. “[T]he court finds that individual questions overwhelm the classwide questions.”

Still, the judge noted that the plaintiffs are not totally out of luck. 'As far as the Court is aware, this is not a case where members of the proposed class will be left without a remedy if the class is not certified, because they may arguably pursue their individual claims in FINRA arbitrations if they so choose.”

The Simpson Thacher team for UBS included Jonathan Youngwood, Janet Gochman, Isaac Rethy, Joshua Polster, Kristina Green, Courtney Skarupski, Adin Pearl, William Pilon and Jared Meyer.

 

What I'm Reading

Mark Judge Won't Testify at Kavanaugh Hearing, His Cozen O'Connor Lawyer Says

“I did not ask to be involved in this matter nor did anyone ask me to be involved,” Judge wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “In fact, I have no memory of this alleged incident.”

Visa, Mastercard Agree to Pay $6.2B to Settle Antitrust Class Action

Visa was represented by Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer and  Holwell Shuster & Goldberg, while Mastercard turned to Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Ford's Lawyer Lawyers Up

Ford Motor Co.'s lead counsel in a contentious roof crush case that ended in a mistrial has hired his own lawyer for dealing with sanctions.

Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn Will Pay $27.5M to Four Sex Abuse Victims

“While nothing can undo the terrible abuse and harm inflicted on these boys this settlement is a way of ensuring they get the help they need not just now but for the rest of their lives.” 

Facebook Is Hit With Gender Bias Claims Over Ad Practices

Civil rights advocates including the ACLU say millions of women were denied information about job opportunities because of their gender.

Mintz Adds Ex-Prosecutors in Boston, New York

The firm (which hallelujah is dropping Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo—I have a mental block remembering the full name) is beefing up its white-collar and litigation practices with a pair of prominent former prosecutors in the Northeast.