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In re Estate of Carpenter2/10/2004
g environment where there are constant drug sales, random acts of violence, gang graffiti, and reference in the neighborhood to the minor as the "million dollar baby." People wish to constantly touch her grandson. He has become a curiosity piece and may become a target for opportunists.
{ } Witness Greg Taliaferro, M.D., a specialist in children with trauma history, testified that continued attention on these settlements creates unresolved issues for the children, retraumatization with an increase in depression and anxiety, including the recurrence or re-emergence of nightmares, as well as increased behavioral problems. As a result, he testified in his expert opinion that there is a psychological risk in the children having significant changes in their financial status being made publicly available. He opined that the child could become a target of the community not just because the child is perceived as a person with money but because of community response concerning whether or not the community thinks the compensation is fair. The doctor testified that open, unrestricted access to sensitive information would increase the probability of harm to the child. Further, unlike most trusteeships arising out of wrongful death cases, the fact that these matters have received extensive media attention, not only in the immediate community but throughout the country, suggests that as expenditures may occur from the trusts, there will be continued publicity that would tend to shine a spotlight on the children and, in turn, "could interfere" with the child's development and cause retraumatization. Thus, the result of the attention to these cases, which is far beyond the attention in other cases involving wrongful death settlement, is that the child "would be traumatized and an exacerbation of behavioral problems as well as re-emergence of emotional distress." The knowledge of the specific application of these funds over the years would be more harmful than other similar cases due to the "public traumatic nature, the public reaction to it, the reaction of the peers following the death in the neighborhood and re-emergence of the trauma reaction."
{ } Based on the foregoing, the court finds that the public interest in these cases is satisfied by the knowledge of the overall settlement of the $4.5 million involving the 22 plaintiffs and specifically by the knowledge of the gross amounts distributed in these two cases. Accordingly, the court finds that the privacy interests of the individuals receiving a division of the settlement figures outweighs the public interest in disclosure of the specific allocation of the funds. Such disclosure of the division of the settlement fund satisfies only a voyeuristic interest. The court finds that protecting the privacy interests of the children to develop as normally as possible under their tragic circumstances outweighs any public right to know this specific information.
{ } Therefore, the specific division of the settlement funds, the reports of the guardian ad litem and the continuing reports, filings, inventories, and accounts of the trusts of the minors should be and are hereby sealed. Separate entries consistent with this opinion have been journalized in all related cases.
Motions to seal granted in part.
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