State of Rhode Island v. CaremarkPCS Health, LLC et al

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND
STATE OF RHODE ISLAND, 	:
Plaintiff, 	:
:
v. 	: 	C.A. No. 25-306-MRD
:
CAREMARKPCS HEALTH, LLC, 	:
et al., 	:
Defendants. 	:
ORDER
PATRICIA A. SULLIVAN, United States Magistrate Judge.
Now pending before the Court are the Motion (ECF No. 80) of Plaintiff, State of Rhode
Island (“State”), for entry of its proposed confidentiality order and the Motion (ECF No. 83) of
Defendants CaremarkPCS Health, LLC, Zinc Heath Services, LLC, Express Scripts, Inc., Ascent
Health Services LLC, OptumRX, Inc., and Emisar Pharma Services LLC (“Defendants”) for
entry of their proposed confidentiality order. These motions arise at the crossroads between
potentially competing legal principles balancing the public’s right of access and an entity’s right
to protection of confidential information produced in discovery in federal court. On one side is
the Court’s authority to issue protective orders permitting these Defendants to unilaterally
determine what is entitled to be designated and protected as confidential and highly confidential
documents, subject to the right of the State to challenge such designation. This authority is
grounded in federal law, which establishes that such protection is appropriate and permissible
during the discovery phase of a case when discovery is not presumptively publicly accessible and
efficiency is served best by maximizing protection of confidential trade secret and financial
information. Conservation Law Found., Inc. v. Equilon Enters. LLC, C.A. No. 17-396-JJM,
2026 WL 221425, at *1 (D.R.I. Jan. 27, 2026), amended on reconsideration, C.A. No. 17-396-
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JJM, 2026 WL 1266360 (D.R.I. May 8, 2026); Conservation Law Found., Inc. v. Equilon Enters.
LLC, C.A. No. 17-396-JJM, 2026 WL 1256866, at *2 (D.R.I. May 7, 2026). On the other side is
the State’s independent duty to make an expeditious pre-disclosure determination whether a
record is exempt from Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act (“APRA”) because it
contains “[t]rade secrets and commercial or financial information . . . of a privileged or
confidential nature” and to make it public if it is not. R.I. Gen. Laws § 38-2-2(4)(B). As of this
writing, no allegedly confidential document is in issue. Rather, the parties seek the Court’s
assistance to resolve their dispute over the applicable procedure to deploy in the event that such a
document becomes in issue in the future.
Having carefully reviewed the parties’ well-argued briefs, the Court finds the solution lies
in the provision of APRA that exempts from disclosure any document subject to a “rule of court”
pursuant, inter alia, to federal law requiring records to be kept confidential. R.I. Gen. Laws §
38-2-2(4)(S). This provision permits this Court to order that a record must be kept confidential
long enough to permit Defendants and the Court adequate time to make an orderly
determination, thereby eliminating the risk of improvident disclosure as might be caused by the
exigency of the tight timing in the State’s proposed confidentiality order.
Based on the foregoing, the motions (ECF Nos. 80, 83) of both Plaintiff and Defendants
are GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. The Court hereby orders that the parties shall file
for issuance by the Court a Confidentiality Order based upon the final version proposed by the
State (ECF No. 87-1), supplemented to include a provision clarifying ¶ 7 to provide that the
Court’s intent is that the motion for protective order would be filed in this Court and adding the
following at the end of ¶ 7:
Further, in light of the short time for the filing of the motion for protective order
in this Court, the Designating Party may supplement the motion for protective
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order at any time within fourteen days of the filing of the motion and the OAG’s
time to respond shall begin to run at the end of the fourteen days. During the time
from the filing of the motion for protective order until the Court’s final
determination of the motion for protective order, the Court hereby orders that such
document is exempt from APRA production because it is required to be kept
confidential by federal law and shall not be produced pursuant to APRA, R.I.
Gen. Laws § 38-2-2(4)(S).
In the interest of clarity, the Court hereby further orders (duplicating the order in the to-be-issued
Confidentiality Order) that, as to any document designated by any party as confidential or highly
confidential pursuant to the to-be-issued Confidentiality Order but as to which the State has
provided notice of its intent to produce pursuant to APRA and any party has timely moved for
protective order, such document is required to be kept confidential by federal law and is
therefore exempt from APRA production and shall not be produced pursuant to APRA unless and
until this Court has made a final determination of the motion for protective order.
/s/ Patricia A. Sullivan
PATRICIA A. SULLIVAN
United States Magistrate Judge
August 19, 2026
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