Emilio Garcia v. Roc Nation LLC

Background

All parties, through counsel, requested a protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c). They sought protection for nonpublic and competitively sensitive information that might be disclosed during discovery. The parties stipulated to the proposed terms, and the court found good cause for an appropriately tailored confidentiality order governing the pretrial phase of the action.

Order

The court ordered the parties, their officers, agents, employees, attorneys, people acting with them, and anyone with actual notice of the order to comply with its terms, subject to contempt sanctions.

The order allows a producing party to designate as confidential only material it reasonably and in good faith believes includes:

- Previously undisclosed financial information, such as profitability reports, fees, royalty rates, guarantees, sales reports, or margins; - Previously undisclosed information about ownership or control of a nonpublic company; - Previously undisclosed business, product-development, or marketing plans; - Personal or intimate information about an individual; or - Another category that the court later gives confidential status.

The producing party must mark protected material as confidential and provide a redacted copy for future public use when applicable. Deposition testimony and exhibits may be designated during the deposition or within 30 days afterward. A party may also correct an earlier failure to designate material by providing written notice and replacement versions within two business days.

Confidential material may be disclosed only to people listed in the order, including the parties and their insurers, counsel and their support staff, vendors working on the case, mediators or arbitrators, certain people identified in documents, potential witnesses, experts, deposition stenographers, and the court. Mediators, arbitrators, witnesses, and experts must first receive the order and sign the required nondisclosure agreement. Recipients may use the material only to prosecute or defend this action and related appeals.

Filing, challenges, and enforcement

The order does not waive objections to discovery, privilege, or evidentiary objections. It also does not itself determine that designated material is confidential. The court retained discretion to decide whether material deserves confidential treatment and warned that it might not seal material introduced at trial.

A party filing confidential material must publicly file a redacted version and separately seek permission to file an unredacted version under seal, with a particularized justification. Parties may challenge confidentiality designations or request additional limits on disclosure, such as an attorneys’-eyes-only restriction, and must bring unresolved disputes to the court under its individual practices.

Within 60 days after final disposition of the action, including appeals, recipients must return or, with the producing party’s permission, destroy confidential material and certify that they kept no copies or summaries. Specifically retained attorneys may keep archival copies of certain case materials, but those copies remain subject to the order. The order survives the end of the litigation, and the court retains jurisdiction to enforce it and impose contempt sanctions. Judge Woods signed and entered the stipulated protective order on March 20, 2025.