Bradley v. Amazon

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW MEXICO
CALEB BRADLEY,
Plaintiff,
v. Case No. 1:25-cv-00030-SMD-LF
AMAZON,
Defendant.
ORDER
This matter comes before the Court on 1) Mr. Bradley’s motion to seal, filed April 28,
2026 (Doc. 85); 2) Mr. Bradley’s second motion to seal, filed May 1, 2026 (Doc. 88); and 3)
Amazon.com Services LLC’s (“Amazon”) motion to strike, filed May 12, 2026 (Doc. 91).
Having reviewed the parties’ submissions and the applicable law, the Court GRANTS all three
motions for the reasons discussed below.
I. Motions to Seal (Docs. 85 and 88)
The protective order in this case (Doc. 39-1) requires Mr. Bradley to redact or move to
seal certain documents before filing them on the docket. Here, he has complied with that
obligation by moving to seal the documents he filed. Docs. 85, 88. Mr. Bradley’s motions to seal
are brief. The Court surmises that he seeks to seal his filings, Docs. 86 and 89, because they
contain information designated confidential pursuant to the parties’ stipulated protective order,
Doc. 39-1. Amazon has filed no opposition to these motions and the deadline to do so has passed.
The failure to file and serve a response in opposition to a motion constitutes consent to grant the
motion pursuant to the Local Rules. D.N.M.LR-Civ. 7.1(b). The documents appended to Docs.
86 and 89 contain information protected under the scope of the parties’ stipulated protective
order, including, among other things, records of the sexual harassment allegations against Mr.
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Bradley and the ensuing investigation. These records include the names of employees who are
not parties to this case, including the names of alleged victims and witness statements regarding
the alleged harassment. See Doc. 39-1 at 1–2 (defining such items as confidential).
Although the public has a common-law right of access to judicial records, this right “is
not absolute” and “can be rebutted if countervailing interests heavily outweigh the public
interests in access.” Mann v. Boatright, 477 F.3d 1140, 1149 (10th Cir. 2007). Here, the public
interest in the investigative files, including the names of non-parties to this case who are alleged
victims of sexual harassment, is minimal in comparison to the privacy concerns those documents
implicate for the non-parties.1 To protect the identities of those non-parties, the Court GRANTS
the motions to seal (Docs. 85, 88).
II. Motion to Strike (Doc. 91)
In addition to his sealed filings, Mr. Bradley has filed redacted versions of the sealed
filings on the public docket. See Docs. 87, 90. However, these reactions are imperfect; the names
of the alleged victims appear repeatedly despite redaction elsewhere. See, e.g., Doc. 87 at 99,
118, 120. Amazon moves to strike the redacted, public filings because they contain many pages
1 Not every page of Mr. Bradley’s filings contains sealable information. In light of the public’s
right to access court records, the Court has considered the option of requiring redactions or of
separating the filings into portions which are sealed and portions which are public. However, Mr.
Bradley has filed well over two hundred pages of documents. See Doc. 86 (in which pages 22–
147 are exhibits), Doc. 89 (in which pages 21–144 are exhibits). Mr. Bradley has not moved for,
and the Court has not granted, permission to exceed the page limit, nor has he provided any
indication that Amazon has agreed to such an extension of the page limit. See D.N.M.LR-Civ.
10.5 (limiting exhibits to fifty pages except by agreement of all parties). It is an imprudent use of
judicial resources for the Court to comb through these excess pages to determine what individual
pages should be sealed, let alone to determine whether separating the sealable portions would
result in a coherent filing. The Court normally would require Mr. Bradley to perform this
exercise as the party filing the sealable information, but Mr. Bradley has demonstrated that his
compliance with redaction requirements is inconsistent at best. See infra. The Court therefore
does not believe that a page-by-page consideration is appropriate in this specific case.
Accordingly, the Court will allow the document as a whole to remain sealed.
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that Amazon marked as confidential. Doc. 91. Mr. Bradley responds that he has “fully redacted
the sensitive information,” and that not every page marked confidential contains sensitive
information. Doc. 96 at 3. It may be true that not every page marked “confidential” meets the
heightened standard for sealing, see n.1, but the question of whether a document should be
sealed or not is for the Court to decide. That is why parties are required to move to seal docket
entries, as Mr. Bradley did for his sealed filings. The protective order does not allow Mr. Bradley
to decide unilaterally that he can file pages marked confidential as long as they are redacted to
his satisfaction. Rather, the protective order only allows filing a redacted document “with the
consent of the party who designated the document as confidential.” Doc. 39-1 at 7. Mr. Bradley
has not obtained that consent here, as evidenced by Amazon’s motion to strike, so his redacted
filings are in violation of the protective order. This is Mr. Bradley’s second violation of the
protective order. The Court strongly admonishes him to review the requirements of the protective
order, including that of page 7, which specifically outlines the process for filing materials that
contain information designated as confidential.
The Court will GRANT the motion to strike (Doc. 91). Documents 87 and 90, the
incompletely redacted public filings, will be removed from the docket. Documents 86 and 89, the
sealed and unredacted versions of those documents, will remain sealed and accessible to the
parties but not to the public.
It is so ordered.
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THE PARTIES ARE NOTIFIED that pursuant to Local Rule 73.1(a), a magistrate judge is
assigned to this case “to preside over all non-dispositive pre-trial matters in accordance
with FED. R. CIV. P. 72(a).” D.N.M.LR-Civ. 73.1(a). “A party may serve and file objections
to [a magistrate judge’s order on a non-dispositive pre-trial matter] within 14 days after
being served with a copy.” FED. R. CIV. P. 72(a). The party’s objections must be both
timely and specific to preserve an issue for review by the district court or appellate court.
United States v. One Parcel of Real Prop., 73 F.3d 1057, 1060 (10th Cir. 1996). If objections
are timely filed, the district judge must consider the objections, but will only set aside those
parts of the magistrate judge’s order which are “clearly erroneous” or “contrary to law.”
FED. R. CIV. P. 72(a). If objections are not timely filed, the firm waiver rule applies. See
Sinclair Wyoming Ref. Co. v. A & B Builders, Ltd., 989 F.3d 747, 781–83 (10th Cir. 2021)
(“the firm waiver rule applies when a party fails to object to a magistrate judge’s non-
dispositive ruling under Rule 72(a)”). “Under the firm waiver rule, a party who fails to
make a timely objection to the magistrate judge’s ruling waives appellate review of both
the factual and legal questions.” Id. at 781 n.23 (citations and alteration omitted); see also
FED. R. CIV. P. 72(a) (“A party may not assign as error a defect in the order not timely
objected to.”).
____________________________________
LAURA FASHING
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
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