Disclosure Debacles - Letting the Cat Out of the Bag Edition

For some reason I don't relish highlighting the mistakes of litigants (or their lawyers) when I blog.  It's not really out of professional courtesy or anything - it's more of a Karmic thing. 

But I recently saw two examples that I couldn't let pass by without flagging:
1.  The name dropper:  Evan Brown points to a situation where someone objected to a subpoena seeking the person's identity, but included his name in the filing:  "Anonymous accused Bittorrent user moves to quash subpoena using real name."

2.  Posting the top secret agreement online:  Ben Sheffner points to a second example, also from the bittorrent litigation, where lawyers suing bittorrent users publicly posted a copy of a proposed settlement agreement which settling bittorrent users would enter into:  "Adventures in settlement confidentiality."  (Here's the Boll AG Settlement page , which contains a link to the agreement.)  The problem?  The unredacted form settlement agreement contains a clause requiring the parties to keep the terms of the settlement agreement "strictly" confidential. The confidentiality provision also has a liquidated damages clause associated with it:  $15,000 in the event of a breach of confidentiality.  Good luck enforcing that provision, or trying to keep these settlements sealed in the future.  [I forgot to mention that Eriq Gardner at THR, Esq. first noted the online version of the agreement.]
D'oh!

[image courtesy of lmmortel / Flickr Creative Commons license]
 
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