Cyphert v. Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., No. 15-3943 (6th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseIn 2012, the government charged Scotts Miracle-Gro in the Southern District of Ohio with one misdemeanor count of pesticide misuse (7 U.S.C. 136j(a)(2)(G)), alleging that Scotts sold approximately 73 million units of wild bird food treated with pesticides unapproved for application to bird food. Scotts pled guilty and admitted the facts in the information. Plaintiffs, five putative class members in a California lawsuit seeking to represent consumers that purchased the wild bird food treated with unapproved pesticides, asked the district court to release two sets of objections, attached to the presentence report (PSR), from the criminal case. The district court denied Plaintiffs access to the objections, holding that neither the First Amendment nor the common law entitled Plaintiffs to the documents. The district court treated the objections the same as the PSR, which carries a presumption of confidentiality. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, upholding the district court’s application of the same standard of confidentiality as the PSR and concluding that Plaintiffs failed to show a special need to overcome that standard.
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