Frito-Lay Enterprises, Inc., which manufactures potato chips, asked Federal Judge Alex Munson yesterday to allow the company to keep its confidential trade secrets by retaining the court’s protective order.<\/p>\n
Frito-Lay was sued by a Saipan resident, Edward P. Comport, who claimed he found a fried roach inside his Frito-Lay bag.<\/p>\n
Comport’s attorney, Timothy Skinner, has asked the federal court to lift the protective order and stop Frito-Lay from stamping the label “confidential” on all the documents it files with the court.<\/p>\n
Timothy Farrell, attorney for Frito-Lay, maintained there are information and details about the company which cannot be made public.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff, for example, wanted Frito-Lay to describe “how you select and prepare a bag of Lay’s potato Chips.”<\/p>\n
Farrell said the company cannot accede to the plaintiff’s demand that it reveal its manufacturing process as it would give its competitors undue advantages.<\/p>\n
“Public policy favors freedom of the press, but that protective order may be appropriate in non-journalist cases,” Farrell said.<\/p>\n
Since Comport is not a journalist, Farrell said, “he has no standing to challenge the court’s order.”<\/p>\n
Farrell also argued that Comport’s case “has no social significance.”<\/p>\n
“He is simply a man who lives in roach-infested house with unsupported allegations against a potato chip manufacturer,” Farrell said.<\/p>\n
Farrell said Comport may only be interested in forcing the company to settle the case rather than disclose trade secrets. (MCM)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Frito-Lay Enterprises, Inc., which manufactures potato chips, asked Federal Judge Alex Munson yesterday to allow the company to keep its confidential trade secrets by retaining the court’s protective order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}