Opinion
CASE NO. 17-10885 PROC. NO. 17-1050
10-12-2017
IN RE: SHAUN N. BELL Debtor STATE OF INDIANA on the relation of the INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT Plaintiff v. SHAUN N. BELL Defendant
NOT INTENDED FOR PUBLICATION DECISION AND ORDER DENYING MOTION TO REDACT
On October 12, 2017.
The eight page complaint initiating this adversary proceeding is accompanied by 216 pages of exhibits. They are divided into eight parts and appear on the docket as Exhibits 1 - 8 to the complaint. The plaintiff recently filed a motion to redact because one of those exhibits - Exhibit B - contains personal identifying information that should not appear on the public record. See, Fed. R. Bankr. P. Rule 9037. Yet, rather than asking permission to refile the entire complaint and all its accompanying, but redacted, exhibits, the plaintiff wants the court to authorize it to refile only a redacted version of exhibit B, and accompanying the motion is a redacted version of that exhibit.
There are several problems with the plaintiff's request. First, the complaint and all of its accompanying exhibits are part of a single filing found at docket entry number 1. The court knows of no authority which would allow the redaction and refiling of only a portion of a single filing, rather resubmitting the entire document with the appropriate portions of it redacted, and the plaintiff has provided none.
The motion was not accompanied by a brief in support thereof, as required by the court's local rules. See, N.D. Ind. L.B.R. B-7007-1(a). --------
Second, the motion does not adequately identify the document to be redacted. The court has been asked to allow the redaction of exhibit B, but the exhibits are identified on the docket by numbers, not letters, and the court has not been told which of those numbered exhibits corresponds to what the plaintiff calls exhibit B. To figure that out would require the court or its staff to manually wade through the mass of pages Plaintiff initially filed in an effort to find what it characterizes as exhibit B and then hope its guess was correct. Cf., United States v. Dunkel, 927 F.2d 955, 956 (7th Cir. 1991) ("Judges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in briefs."); Singleton v. Jupiter Communities, LLC, 2014 WL 251659 (D. Nevada 2014) ("Judges are not required to comb through the entire docket and all its pleadings and papers to figure [] things out."). The plaintiff knows precisely what it wants done and should say so clearly.
Finally, although the court has the technical ability to disable one or more of the hyperlinks associated with the complaint's various exhibits, doing so will cause problems and potentially confuse anyone accessing the complaint from the docket. They will read the complaint and its various references to the attached exhibit B but there will be no such exhibit and no ready explanation for its absence. Only by combing through the entire docket would the reader discover that the original exhibit has been replaced by a redacted version which is found at an entirely different place. Those difficulties can, and therefore should, be avoided by resubmitting the entire filing, not just a portion of it.
Plaintiff's motion to redact, filed on October 4, 2017, is DENIED, without prejudice.
SO ORDERED.
/s/ Robert E . Grant
Chief Judge, United States Bankruptcy Court