fraudulent. After release of the classified documents, new litigation was attempted, based in part on a complaint that the classified material contained no secret information. Monetary damages were sought as a remedy. The initial new claim was to the Supreme Court for a writ of error in coram nobis, based on the claim that the use of the "secret" label in the original crash report was a fraud on the court. This was an attempt to overturn the settlement agreement of June 1953. This motion was denied on June 23, 2003 in In re Herring. The case was refiled as Herring v. United States in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on October 1, 2003. The trial court found no fraud in the government's claim of privilege in 1953. In 2005, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld the decision in the new litigation, in which District Court determined "there was no fraud because the documents, read in their historical context, could have revealed secret information about the equipment being tested on the plane and, on a broader reading, the claim of privilege referred to both the mission and the workings of the B-29". Even without the broad reading that the claim included secrecy concerning the aircraft itself, the court found it possible that the documents' revelations "that the mission required an 'aircraft capable of dropping bombs' and that the mission required an airplane capable of 'operating at altitudes of 20,000 feet and above'" could have been "seemingly insignificant pieces of information [that] would have been of keen interest to a Soviet spy fifty years ago." Discussion and criticism of privilege in Reynolds There has been much discussion about the use of government privilege to classify information. On the one hand, there is the need to protect government secrecy. On the other, there is always suspicion that "classified documents" are merely a way to cover-up government malfeasance or bad faith actions of the executive branch. Prosser and Keaton Privilege is the modern term applied to those considerations which avoid liability where it might otherwise follow. As it is generally used, the term applies to any circumstance used to justify or excuse a prima facie tort, such as an assault, battery or trespass. It signifies that the defendant has acted to further an interest of such social importance that it is entitled to protection,