No Closed Trial, Pseudonymity at Trial, or Audio-Only Testimony for Billion-Dollar Maine Lottery Winner
Some short excerpts from yesterday’s long decision by Judge John Woodcock (D. Me.) in Doe v. Smith:
On November 14, 2023, John Doe, a pseudonym for the father of a minor daughter, filed a lawsuit against Sara Smith, a pseudonym for the mother of the same minor, seeking an injunction and other relief against Ms. Smith for disclosure of information subject to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) between them. Specifically, Mr. Doe, a winner of the Maine State Lottery, claimed that Ms. Smith violated the NDA by informing third parties about his winnings….
Mr. Doe notes the Court “hit the nail on the head” when it observed in a January 10, 2025 status conference that he is faced with a “Catch-22” if this case were to proceed to a public trial: “even if Plaintiff were to win on his claims, his identity and confidential information would be revealed to the public and the media; he would effectively lose the privacy war and subject himself and his minor daughter to the irreparable harm he brought suit to avoid.”
He thus files this motion for a closed trial and informs the Court of his intent to seek interlocutory appeal of the Court’s ruling if necessary. Mr. Doe specifically requests that any trial in this matter be closed in its entirety to the public and media, or alternatively that all testimony of the parties and their family members to be submitted to the jury be taken by telephone or audio-only Zoom along with “appropriate safeguards, including, but not limited to, the partial closure of any trial to the public and media where appropriate, in order to ensure that the identities and other personal identifying information of the Parties and their family members remain anonymous.” …
The court said no to the closed trial request:
From the Court’s perspective, Mr. Doe’s request that the trial itself be closed to the public is a nonstarter. It runs hard against historic concepts of wha
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