A federal judge on Friday reined in a probe of leaks from the hard-fought bankruptcy of rare-earths producer Molycorp, handing a win to Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher S. Sontchi said the Molycorp disclosure order “is overly broad and needs to be narrowed,” at a hearing on Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. The news organization had challenged a court order issued last week by Judge Sontchi, which required some 123 people to disclose what they had told Bloomberg reporters about Molycorp. The judge reversed his order after urging from Bloomberg to weigh First Amendment interests against the court’s power to control the bankruptcy proceeding. The judge ordered the destruction of the disclosure documents which were filed on Tuesday in bankruptcy court.
