In a ruling issued last Wednesday by Magistrate Judge Reid Neureiter, the court addressed Kazazian v. Wilson Elser LLP (D. Colo.), a case in which the plaintiff appears to be the same individual who was denied anonymity in Roe v. Colorado Judiciary Department.
Legal actions are a matter of public record. Statements made within lawsuits that are publicly filed are generally protected from defamation claims. However, the plaintiff who initiates public accusations of professional misconduct or breach of fiduciary duty against defendants must, in exchange, anticipate that there will likely be public counter-claims in return. Those counter-claims may disclose personal information about the plaintiff, which she must accept as part of pursuing the lawsuit.
And an excerpt from the broader analysis:
{The plaintiff has brought a suit against the attorneys handling her disciplinary proceedings, alleging legal malpractice and breaches of fiduciary duties. She has also asserted claims of professional negligence against the neuropsychologist hired to prepare an expert report.}
The plaintiff contends that diversity jurisdiction exists because she has been domiciled in Wyoming since 2024. Defendants’ initial motion to dismiss questioned whether the plaintiff truly maintains Wyoming domicile. If the plaintiff is domiciled in Colorado rather than Wyoming, it would defeat any asserted federal diversity jurisdiction. The defendants’ original motion to dismiss cited and attached extensive investigative results, including motor vehicle records, showing that:
- The plaintiff has owned residential property in Vail, Colorado since 2007, either personally or via entities she controls;
- The utility services for the Vail property are in the plaintiff’s name;
- A June 17, 2026 physical inspection of the Vail property revealed a vehicle registered to the plaintiff occupying the space allotted to her property;
- The plaintiff either directly or through entities she controls owns property on South Logan Street in Denver, Colorado;
- Database inquiries did not uncover any current Wyoming residency or real property held by the plaintiff;
- The plaintiff owns a car registered at the Vail, Colorado location; the Colorado registration expired on March 31, 2026, and the vehicle has not been registered in Wyoming;
- Although the plaintiff is a disbarred lawyer in Colorado, her address with the Colorado Supreme Court is listed as a business address at 34 N. Franklin St., PO Box 6871992, Pinedale, WY 82941, which corresponds to Moosely Mailboxes—not a residential address;
- The plaintiff holds an active real estate license in New York that lists the Vail, Colorado property as her address;
- The address listed in the plaintiff’s complaint for this case corresponds to a commercial property used by Wyoming Registered Agent, Inc., a business that provides commercial mail receiving and registered agent services;
- An analysis of emails the plaintiff sent to the defendants since 2024 shows that the IP addresses of nearly all sending locations originated in Colorado, with two exceptions; no emails originated from Wyoming;
- Voting records indicate the plaintiff cast ballots in Eagle County, Colorado as recently as November 5, 2024, renewed her voting registration there in October 2025, and there is no record of Wyoming voter registration or voting history for the plaintiff.
As a result of their filing, the defendants argued on an emergency basis for restricting the motion, asserting that it contained “unnecessary private, personal, vehicle-identifying, resident-related, location-related, e-mail-header/IP, investigative, or former-client information.” …
The District of Colorado’s policy provides that, absent statutory or procedural constraints or a court order, the public may access all court documents and proceedings. D.C.COLO.LCivR 7.2(a). The local rules do permit restricting documents or proceedings by court order when the party seeking restriction demonstrates “a clearly defined and serious injury,” should access not be restricted, and shows that the protected interest outweighs the public-access presumption. The movant must also explain why alternatives to restriction—such as redaction—are impracticable.
Beyond the court’s stated policy, which presumes openness of court filings, the Supreme Court has recognized a common-law right to access judicial records and documents in civil cases, although this right is not absolute. As emphasized by my colleague Judge John L. Kane, open court proceedings reflect American values of governance; the concept of markedly restricting or sealing a civil case runs counter to that principle. As Judge Kane rightly stated:
We start from the fundamental premise that it is the judiciary’s duty to avoid secrecy, in-camera hearings, and shielding the judicial process from public scrutiny. Courts are public institutions established to serve the public interest. A casual glance at our legal tradition makes clear that secret court proceedings clash with a free society.
M.M. v. Zavaras (D. Colo. 1996), aff’d (10th Cir. 1998). The public’s strong interest in accessing court proceedings must be weighed against any asserted privacy interests of a litigant who seeks to seal them.
It is also indisputable that the claims at issue here, including those about domicile, bear on the court’s decision-making. These issues touch the public realm and involve public concerns. The plaintiff’s malpractice, breach-of-fiduciary-duty, and negligence claims are serious public allegations capable of harming reputations, and the defendants have a right to defend themselves against them.
Among the defenses raised is the possibility that the plaintiff, through deceptive representations, has fashioned federal jurisdiction where none would otherwise exist. She did so to sidestep state court in Colorado, where, owing to prior abusive litigation behavior, she has been barred from initiating suit without counsel. Currently, there is no such bar on proceeding in federal court.
The defendants argue that by asserting Wyoming domicile, the plaintiff is attempting to fraudulently gain access to the federal judiciary to which she would not ordinarily be entitled, by misrepresenting her domiciliary status. These are grave allegations with a public interest in understanding both the claims and how the court handles them….
The information in dispute—current or former addresses, vehicle details, license plates, and VIN numbers—are, as the defendants note, publicly available. If the data are publicly accessible, their reproduction in a court filing does not create additional injury to the plaintiff.
Furthermore, the plaintiff has failed to identify any “clearly defined and serious injury” that would result from access not being restricted. Apart from a general concern about public availability of her personal information in court filings, she has not demonstrated any particular harm that could arise from disclosure. She does not allege being the target of threats or violence, for instance.
The sole description of the purported harm appears in her initial restriction motion: “The injury is concrete and immediate. Once personal information is placed on the public federal docket, it can be copied, indexed, searched, aggregated, republished, or misused. That harm cannot be fully repaired later.” These statements are conclusory and do not establish actual harm.
In her original motion, there is a suggestion that some personal information may have originated from the defendants’ prior representation of the plaintiff. Yet, according to the investigator’s affidavit attached to the motion to dismiss—describing their investigative methods, counsel representations, and the court’s review of the contested information—none of the data in the motion to dismiss appears to have been obtained from prior attorney-client communications. The plaintiff has offered no contrary evidence. Without any disclosure of privileged or confidential attorney-client information, she has not shown any injury, much less a “clearly defined and serious injury.” …
[The case’s serious allegations on both sides cannot] be assessed in a vacuum, nor should they be resolved behind closed doors. Regardless of how the Court rules on these questions, the process of weighing competing claims should take place in full public view. The act of redacting substantial portions of the motion to dismiss does a disservice to the public’s keen interest in properly evaluating the allegations presented in a federal civil action and in scrutinizing the judicial process.
This is not to imply that there is no emotional burden attached to having personal information exposed in public court records. The M.M. v. Zavaras decision cited above makes this point plainly. In Zavaras, a prisoner sued the Colorado Department of Corrections seeking a court order to fund an abortion and asked to proceed pseudonymously. The court denied that request at the trial level, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed. Judge Kane found that any privacy interest claimed by the plaintiff was clearly outweighed by the public interest. The same conclusion applies here: the plaintiff’s privacy interest is not compelling, and the public interest in open courts prevails decisively….
The court reiterates that it was the plaintiff’s choice to file this lawsuit. Lawsuits are public. The claims raised in publicly filed lawsuits are generally shielded from defamation claims. Yet, in exchange for the freedom to allege public malpractice or fiduciary breaches without the threat of a defamation suit in response, the plaintiff must anticipate that public counterclaims may surface and may reveal her personal information. This is part of the price of pursuing litigation.
In sum, the court concludes that the plaintiff has not shown that the motion to restrict the filing should be sustained, nor that only a redacted version should appear on the public docket.
Brittney Ann Vig (Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP) and Erik David Moya, Jacqueline B. Sharuzi-Brown, and Natalie Rose Novak (Sharuzi Law Group, Ltd.) represent the defendants.
