A Superior Court judge criticized for sealing a personal injury verdict after it was read out loud in court has reversed himself.

Judge Thomas Buck's six-page decision Tuesday explaining why he sealed the verdict said he was following a request by the defense lawyers to preserve the confidentiality of a high-low agreement. Referencing the defendant's desire to seal the verdict over the plaintiff's objection, Buck wrote, "In applying a rational meaning to this condition, this Court was compelled to seal the verdict as to comply with the terms of the contract."

In reversing his own order to seal the verdict, Buck cited the presumption of public access to court documents and materials related to civil litigation, and noted the high-low agreement was put into the record.

The high-low deal had parameters of $1.5 million and $4.5 million, according to a court document.

"The balancing test this court must employ therefore is between the strong public policy to enforce a settlement and the strong presumption in favor of public access," he said. "Mere deprivation of the right to enforce a contractual obligation is not, without an additional showing of serious harm, sufficient to override the public's right of access to the Courts," Buck wrote, citing a 1984 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Publicker Industries v. Cohen.

"It should also be noted that as the verdict was read in open court with members of the public present, that specific information is already public information and it would be impossible to put that genie back in the [bottle]," Buck added. "Therefore, the verdict amount is public and the verdict sheet shall not be sealed."

The verdict sheet shows the jury on Nov. 8 ordered Jacobs Engineering Group to pay injured construction worker Joao Silva $2,579,000. That verdict followed a four-week trial before Buck, who ordered it sealed after it was read in open court with members of the public present.

Silva's lawyers protested the judge's sealing of the verdict, arguing in a Nov. 18 letter that the parties agreed to keep the high-low agreement confidential but made no such agreement about the verdict. Keeping a civil damages verdict secret is against court rules and case law, and is almost never done, that letter said. A party seeking to make a verdict confidential is obliged to show why that should happen, but no such showing was made in the present case, lawyers for Silva added.

Silva's lawyers argued that Jacobs Engineering sought to keep the public in the dark about the verdict because it showed the company failed to carry out its contractual obligation to safely complete a construction project paid for with taxpayer dollars.

Silva, a laborer for a subcontractor on a New Jersey Turnpike construction project in Secaucus, was severely injured when he was hit by a construction vehicle in 2013. The suit named multiple defendants, but Jacobs Engineering was the only one still in the case when it went to trial. Silva claimed that Jacobs was negligent for failing to maintain safe conditions at the work site.

The jury awarded Silva $1 million for pain and suffering, disability, impairment and loss of enjoyment of life; $944,000 for past and future lost income; and $635,000 for future medical and life care expenses. The jury declined to make an award to Silva's wife, Maria Silva, for loss of her husband's household duties, companionship, comfort and consortium.

Gerald Clark and Mark Morris of the Clark Law Firm in Belmar, representing Silva, and Timothy Saia of Morgan Melhuish Abrutyn in Livingston, who represented Jacobs Engineering, did not return requests for comment.