“Goddamn, that is crazy,” former NRA board member Phil Journey, whose term expired in April, said when told about the sealed case, which was filed by the Dallas-based firm of the group’s outside counsel, William A. She states in the motion that she handed over much of the information sought in prior litigation. In June, Makris’s wife filed a motion to quash the subpoena in another federal court district that refers to the sealed case in Texas. The Trace learned of the case because the NRA attempted to subpoena the wife of Tony Makris, the head of The Mercury Group and until the relationship imploded, a longtime confidante of the gun group’s CEO, Wayne LaPierre. The parties did not respond to written questions and requests for comment. But that ignores the fact that the public has an interest in open courts, in how cases proceed, in whether one party gets a break and another does not.” “Judges concentrate on the parties before them,” Kirtley said, “and if the parties are content with or agitating for secrecy, some courts don’t care and just go along to get along. In response, the district’s deputy of operations said in an email that court employees “are prohibited from commenting on the status of any case that is filed under seal, which includes confirming that any such sealed case exists.”Ĭourt filings show the sum paid by the gun group in its acrimonious split with Ackerman McQueen.Īlthough judges are not supposed to seal cases merely because the parties would prefer anonymity, Kirtley said that too often they do. Written questions were sent to the chief clerk of the district. The Trace got no response to messages left at Fish’s chambers asking for such an order or, in the alternative, to simply unseal the case. Federal court policy calls on judges to justify the sealing of an entire civil case with a written order that explains the decision. Joe Fish, who oversaw the settled case, is also handling the sealed proceeding, records suggest. As The Trace reported in April, a witness report filed in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s suit against the gun group states that the case ended “with the NRA paying Ackerman $12 million in settlement funds.”Īt some point last year, presumably after that settlement was reached, the NRA filed this secret suit against Ackerman and one of its subsidiaries, The Mercury Group. The parties reached a confidential settlement in March 2022. The feud fed tumult that has plagued the NRA in recent years and sapped its clout. In 2019, a rift between the NRA and Ackerman erupted in dueling suits alleging deceit and betrayal. “The price of admission ought to be that the filing of a lawsuit is a matter of public record, and that if elements of a case are sealed, it’s only for legitimate reasons.” “People that have disputes don’t have to use courts to settle them, they have other options,” Kirtley said. Simply wanting to avoid attention is not a valid basis, she said. Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota, said that courts have generally sealed entire cases for the same reasons that a particular filing is made confidential: to protect personal privacy, national security, or trade secrets. The step can only be taken as a “last resort,” according to federal court policy, and “justified by a showing of extraordinary circumstances and the absence of narrower feasible and effective alternatives.” While individual documents are commonly sealed in civil cases, it’s extremely unusual to shield the very existence of a case from the public. Not even an index number for the case, underway in a Texas federal court, appears in a database of federal court actions. As the parties brawled, they were forced to expose much of their inner workings, which makes it particularly strange that the adversaries are now involved in a lawsuit that is being carried out entirely in secret. The National Rifle Association and its former public relations partner Ackerman McQueen spent years in court trading accusations of libel, fraud, and breach of contract.
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