In Re Meta Pixel Healthcare Litigation
- William Orrick
- 3:22-cv-03580
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In re Meta Pixel Healthcare Litigation, Judge DeMarchi limited plaintiffs’ depositions and set deadlines for scheduling them.
The plaintiffs and Meta in all actions covered by the litigation, including the witnesses and representatives involved in the scheduled depositions.
What happened
In re Meta Pixel Healthcare Litigation concerns the parties’ efforts to agree on the number, duration, scope, and scheduling of fact-witness depositions.
The court directed plaintiffs to take no more than 12 individual fact-witness depositions, with 10 remaining after two had already occurred, and no more than 20 hours of corporate testimony from Meta. It also set deadlines for identifying witnesses, providing available dates, selecting deposition dates, and raising disputes.
Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi ordered the parties to follow these directions unless they agreed otherwise. She also ordered that Mr. Mudd’s deposition proceed as scheduled and required disputes about the corporate deposition topics to be submitted by March 11, 2025.
The detailed version
- In Re Meta Pixel Healthcare Litigation · No. 3:22-cv-03580
- William Orrick
- Feb. 18, 2025
Background
The court reviewed the parties’ February 14, 2025 status report about their efforts to agree on the number, duration, scope, and scheduling of fact-witness depositions. The order applies to all actions in the consolidated litigation and provides directions the parties must follow unless they agree otherwise.
Deposition limits
The court limited plaintiffs to 12 depositions of individual fact witnesses. Plaintiffs had already taken two such depositions, leaving 10 under the order. Additional individual depositions require either a stipulation or court permission. The court stated that any request for additional depositions must satisfy the relevance and proportionality requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b), and that plaintiffs must make a particularized showing of need.
Separately, plaintiffs may take no more than 20 hours of testimony under Rule 30(b)(6). That rule permits a corporation to designate representatives to testify about specified topics. The 20-hour limit applies regardless of how many representatives Meta designates.
Scheduling requirements
Plaintiffs had to identify the individual fact-witness depositions they presently wished to take by February 19, 2025, at 5:00 p.m., although they did not need to identify all 10 remaining witnesses by that deadline. Meta had to provide two available dates for each identified witness, between the date of the order and March 28, 2025, by February 25, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. Plaintiffs had to select dates by February 28, 2025, at 5:00 p.m.
The order states that scheduled depositions must proceed on the selected dates and may not be canceled without a written agreement or court order. Mr. Mudd’s deposition was to proceed as scheduled on February 26, 2025. The parties were also required to complete all depositions by April 18, 2025. Any dispute over whether a particular witness should be deposed was to be promptly submitted to the court.
Rule 30(b)(6) disputes and disposition
Any dispute about plaintiffs’ Rule 30(b)(6) deposition notice to Meta had to be submitted for resolution by March 11, 2025. Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi entered these discovery-management directions. The order addressed deposition limits and procedures; it did not decide the underlying merits of the litigation.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.