No Sealing of Property Information in Motion Challenging Diversity Jurisdiction
From Magistrate Judge Reid Neureiter last Wednesday in Kazazian v. Wilson Elser LLP (D. Colo.) (plaintiff appears to be the same plaintiff who was denied pseudonymity in Roe v. Colorado Judiciary Department):
Lawsuits are public. Allegations found in publicly filed lawsuits are generally immune from claims of defamation. But, in exchange for being able to launch public allegations of malpractice or breach of duty against Defendants without threat of a defamation claim in response, Plaintiff necessarily must accept that there will likely be public counter-allegations in return that may reveal her personal information. She will have to accept this as part of the cost of bringing a lawsuit.
And an excerpt from the broader analysis:
{Plaintiff has filed a lawsuit against her disciplinary proceeding attorneys, claiming legal malpractice and breaches of fiduciary duty. She also has leveled charges, essentially of professional negligence, against the neuropsychologist retained to provide an expert report.}
Plaintiff alleges that diversity jurisdiction exists because she has been domiciled in Wyoming since 2024. Defendants' first motion to dismiss questioned whether Plaintiff is actually domiciled in Wyoming. If Plaintiff is domiciled in Colorado instead of Wyoming, it would defeat any asserted federal diversity jurisdiction. Defendants' original motion to dismiss referenced and attached the results of significant investigative work, including motor vehicle records, showing that:
- Plaintiff has owned residential property in Vail, Colorado since 2007, either directly or through companies she controls;
- the utility service for the Vail property is in Plaintiff's name;
- a June 17, 2026 physical inspection of the Vail property showed that a vehicle registered to Plaintiff was in the space designed for the Plaintiff's property;
- Plaintiff either directly, or through companies she controls, owns property on South Logan Street in Denver, Colorado;
- database searches did not reveal any current Wyoming residency or real property for Plaintiff;
- Plaintiff owns a car that is registered at the Vail, Colorado location, the Colorado registration expired on March 31, 2026, and the vehicle has not been registered in Wyoming;
- while Plaintiff is a disbarred lawyer in Colorado, her address with the Colorado Supreme Court is listed as a business address at 34 N. Franklin St., PO Box 6871992, Pinedale, WY 82941, which is the address for Moosely Mailboxes—not a residential address;
- Plaintiff has an active real estate license in New York which lists the Vail, Colorado property as her address;
- the address listed in Plaintiff's complaint in this action is a commercial property for Wyoming Registered Agent, Inc., a commercial mail-receiving and registered agent business;
- an analysis of emails sent by Plaintiff to Defendants since 2024 shows that Internet Protocol ("IP") addresses of all email sending locations, except two, were from Colorado. No emails were sent from Wyoming;
- voting records showed Plaintiff voted in Eagle County, Colorado as recently as November 5, 2024, she renewed her voting registration there in October of 2025, and there is no Wyoming voter registration for Plaintiff or any history of her voting in Wyoming….
As a result of Defendants' filing, Plaintiff, on an emergency basis, moved to restrict the motion …, asserting that motion contained "unnecessary private, personal, vehicle-identifying, resident-related, location-related, e-mail-header/IP, investigative or former-client information." …
It is the stated policy of the District of Colorado that "[u]nless restricted by statute, rule of civil procedure, or court order, the public shall have access to all documents filed with the court and all court proceedings." D.C.COLO.LCivR 7.2(a). The local rules do provide for the restriction of documents or proceedings by court order if the party seeking restriction can identify "a clearly defined and serious injury that would result if access is not restricted," and can also show that the interest to be protected "outweighs the presumption of public access." The party seeking restriction must also explain why no alternative to restriction is practicable (such as redaction …).
Beyond the Court's stated policy, which presumes that documents filed in court proceedings are to be public, the Supreme Court has recognized the common law right to access judicial records and documents in civil cases, although the right is not absolute…. In addition, as emphasized by my colleague Judge John L. Kane, it is in keeping with the American ideals of government for court proceedings to be open to the public. The notion of significantly restricting or sealing a civil case is repugnant to that principle. As Judge Kane has rightly stated:
We begin with the fundamental presupposition that it is the responsibility of judges to avoid secrecy, in camera hearings and the concealment of the judicial process from public view. Courts are public institutions which exist for the public to serve the public interest. Even a superficial recognition of our judicial history compels one to recognize that secret court proceedings are anathema to a free society.
M.M. v. Zavaras (D. Colo. 1996), aff'd (10th Cir. 1998). The strong interest of the public in having access to court proceedings must be weighed against any claimed privacy interest of a litigant in sealing the proceedings.
Also, it cannot be disputed that the allegations underlying this dispute, and the associated allegations regarding domicile, are important to the decision-making in this case. The issues are of public concern and involve the public interest…. [Plaintiff's malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence claims] are serious public allegations that can have grave reputational impacts. Defendants are entitled to defend themselves against such charges.
Among their defenses is that Plaintiff, through fraudulent representations, has manufactured federal jurisdiction where it otherwise would not exist. She has done this to avoid Colorado state court, where, because of prior abusive litigation conduct, Plaintiff has been prohibited from filing suit without being represented by counsel. To date, there is no such prohibition on Plaintiff in federal court.
Defendants claim that Plaintiff, in alleging Wyoming domicile, is attempting to fraudulently gain access to the federal judicial system to which she would otherwise not be entitled by dissembling about where she is domiciled. These too are serious charges and there is a public interest in understanding both the allegations and how the Court resolves those allegations….
[Plaintiff's] information in question—her current or former addresses, vehicle type, license plate and VIN numbers—is, as Defendants point out, all publicly available…. If the information is publicly available, then there is no additional injury that can befall Plaintiff from its reproduction in a court pleading.
[And] Plaintiff has not identified any "clearly defined and serious injury" that would result to her if access were not restricted. Other than a general concern that her personal information will be available in court documents, Plaintiff does not identify any particular harm that may befall her from the disclosure of this information. She does not claim to be the target of any threats or violence, for example.
The only description of the supposed injury is found in her original motion to restrict: "The injury is concrete and immediate. Once personal information is placed on the public federal docket, it can be copied, indexed, searched, aggregated, republished, or misused. That harm cannot be fully repaired later." These are wholly conclusory assertions and do not establish harm.
In Plaintiff's original motion to restrict, there is a suggestion that some of the personal information may have come from the Attorney Defendants' prior representation of Plaintiff. But, based the investigator's affidavit attached to the motion to dismiss describing her investigation methods, representations of counsel, and my review of the disputed information, it does not appear that any of the information contained in the motion to dismiss was based on facts learned during the Attorney Defendants' representation of Plaintiff years ago. Plaintiff makes no showing to the contrary. Without there having been any disclosure of attorney-client privileged or otherwise confidential information, Plaintiff has not shown any injury, much less a "clearly defined and serious injury." …
[The serious allegations on both sides of this case cannot] be assessed or decided in a vacuum and certainly should not be decided behind closed doors. However the Court decides these questions, the process of evaluating these competing allegations should be conducted in the bright cleansing light of public scrutiny. Redacting substantial portions of the motion to dismiss does a disservice to the strong public interest in being able to properly assess allegations made in a federal court lawsuit and in evaluating the judicial process.
This is not to suggest that there is not some emotional toll that may result from having personal information disclosed in public court documents. The case of M.M. v. Zavaras, cited above, makes the point with clarity. In Zavaras, a prison inmate sued the Colorado Department of Corrections ("CDOC") seeking to require the CDOC to pay for an abortion. The plaintiff there sought leave to proceed by pseudonym. Otherwise, her name, her pregnancy, and her desire for an abortion would be publicly disclosed in court documents. These are undeniably personal facts that the plaintiff understandably would have preferred to keep out of the public eye.
But she had filed a lawsuit seeking court action. The motion was denied by Judge Kane at the trial level, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed on appeal. Judge Kane found that "whatever interest in privacy is claimed on behalf of the plaintiff, the countervailing public interests clearly and decisively outweigh it." The same can be said in this case. Plaintiff's privacy interest is not compelling and the public interests in open courts decisively outweigh it….
The Court will note again that it is Plaintiff who elected to file this lawsuit. Lawsuits are public. Allegations found in publicly filed lawsuits are generally immune from claims of defamation. But, in exchange for being able to launch public allegations of malpractice or breach of duty against Defendants without threat of a defamation claim in response, Plaintiff necessarily must accept that there will likely be public counter-allegations in return that may reveal her personal information. She will have to accept this as part of the cost of bringing a lawsuit.
Bottom line, the Court finds that Plaintiff has not met her burden of showing that the motion to dismiss itself should be maintained under restriction, or that only a redacted version should be filed on the public docket….
Brittney Ann Vig (Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP) and Erik David Moya, Jacqueline B. Sharuzi-Brown, and Natalie Rose Novak (Sharuzi Law Group, Ltd.) represent defendants.