From today's Fourth Circuit opinion in Doe v. Sidar, written by Judge Toby Heytens and joined by Judges Robert Bruce King and J. Harvie Wilkinson:
A woman sued a man for sexually assaulting her and used a pseudonym throughout discovery. After the man refused to comply with its discovery orders [including by failing to provide a DNA sample], the district court entered a default judgment against him and ordered the woman to use her real name going forward. The woman appeals the district court's non-anonymity order …. [W]e hold the district court committed legal error by understating the woman's interest in anonymity, appearing to announce a general rule that fairness considerations invariably cut against allowing a plaintiff to be anonymous at trial unless the defendant is also anonymous, and failing to recognize the significance of its default judgment on liability….
Because the district court entered a default judgment on liability, we treat it as conclusively established that Cenk Sidar raped Jane Doe in London in September 2017. As this Court has explained, "[t]he legal effect of a default judgment is that the defendant is deemed to have admitted the plaintiff's well-pleaded allegations of fact … and is barred from contesting … the facts thus established." …
The trial court refused to allow Doe to proceed pseudonymously, and the Fourth Circuit held that this decision was mistaken. The Circuit acknowledged that pseudonymity is an exception, available only in rare cases. But it noted that lawsuits brought by rape victims are one category of cases in which plaintiffs can often proceed pseudonymously, to protect their privacy. And it held that the trial court wrongly concluded, among other things, that one-sided pseudonymity—pseudonymity for plaintiff when the plaintiff has named the defendant—is impermissible:
