Riverdale Mills Corporation v. Chavez-DeRemer
Split Score
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This score (0-100) indicates how likely this case is to be reviewed by the Supreme Court based on:
Case Summary
Disposition
Affirmed
Riverdale Mills petitioned the First Circuit for interlocutory review after an OSHRC ALJ refused to seal the company’s 2019 balance-sheet, a required exhibit for its Equal Access to Justice Act fee request. Assuming (without deciding) that it had collateral-order jurisdiction, the First Circuit held that Riverdale waived its new statutory argument and that the ALJ did not abuse her discretion in applying common-law and regulatory access principles, thus leaving the balance-sheet unsealed and denying the petition.
Circuit Split Identified
Legal Issue
Whether a district-court or agency order denying a motion to seal is categorically appealable under the collateral-order doctrine or only appealable on a case-specific basis.
Circuit Positions
Categorical rule – denial of a motion to seal is immediately appealable under the collateral-order doctrine.
Case-specific approach – no categorical rule; appealability turns on the traditional collateral-order factors.
Conflict Summary
Several circuits treat every order denying a motion to seal as automatically appealable under the collateral-order doctrine, while other circuits (including the First) require a case-specific analysis of the four Cohen factors and therefore do not recognize categorical appealability.