Sealed records

The National Law Journal has been prohibited by court order from publishing information it obtained legally.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff issued a temporary restraining order against the National Law Journal last Friday after she discovered the news organization was planning to publish a story regarding the fee dispute between District of Columbia-based law firm Hogan Lovells and one of its former clients, beverage maker POM Wonderful. POM had hired Hogan Lovells to represent the company during a regulatory investigation.

Four media organizations that teamed up and petitioned a Charlottesville judge to unseal records in the trial of a University of Virginia student charged with murder won a small battle on Tuesday.

But the fight isn’t over.

The news outlets were able to obtain copies of partially redacted orders explaining why search warrants and affidavits have been sealed, but the records themselves remain out of the public’s view.

A media coalition has successfully convinced a court to unseal a search warrant affidavit used to search a journalist's home for evidence about a missing iPhone prototype.

A North Carolina state judge has sealed the deposition of former presidential candidate John Edwards' mistress for at least 45 days, The Charlotte Observer reported.

Rielle Hunter sued former Edwards aide Andrew Young and his wife Cheri for the return of an alleged sex tape of Rielle and Edwards.

An Illinois federal judge has given three news organizations immediate access to a previously sealed document in the case against former Governor Rod Blagojevich, the Associated Press reports.

A Pennsylvania judge has sealed the entire docket in a case involving a criminal indictment against a state senator, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday extended a ban on secrecy in civil court cases to criminal proceedings.

The New Mexico Supreme Court has adopted a uniform set of rules that will dictate when court records can be sealed, including a presumption that the records are public, the El Defensor Chieftain reported.

Attorneys for a Washington newspaper argued before the state Supreme Court on Tuesday that a county improperly withheld expenses incurred defending a double-homicide case from a public-records request because the records were sealed by a judge,The Yakima Herald-Times reported.

In an opinion that was unsealed on Wednesday, a New York federal judge ruled last month that prosecutors must produce Justice Department memos in a high-profile terrorism case, the New York Law Journal reported.