In Re Meta Pixel Healthcare Litigation
- William Orrick
- 3:22-cv-03580
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Re Meta Pixel Healthcare Litigation, Judge DeMarchi ordered plaintiffs to produce targeted cookie documents in a discovery dispute.
Plaintiffs in the related actions must produce documents about relevant third-party cookies, subject to the identification criteria and privacy-protection procedures described in the order. Meta must provide objective identification criteria by April 30, 2025.
What happened
In Re Meta Pixel Healthcare Litigation concerns Meta’s request for documents showing cookies on plaintiffs’ devices and browsers used to access healthcare websites and patient portals. Plaintiffs objected to producing the documents.
Meta argued the documents could help defend against claims about health-information collection, targeted advertising, privacy expectations, and responsibility for plaintiffs’ alleged harm. Meta also said the information could help oppose class certification. Plaintiffs argued the request was outside the issues, overly broad, privacy-sensitive, and unduly late.
The court ordered plaintiffs to produce documents sufficient to show third-party cookies capable of collecting or sharing health information. Judge DeMarchi said plaintiffs need not analyze the very large number of cookies themselves, but they may use objective criteria that Meta must provide by April 30, 2025; otherwise, they must produce the entire list of third-party cookies. Production was due May 12, 2025, and the parties had to discuss additional privacy protections.
The detailed version
- In Re Meta Pixel Healthcare Litigation · No. 3:22-cv-03580
- William Orrick
- Apr. 24, 2025
Background
The parties asked the court to resolve a discovery dispute concerning Meta’s Request for Production 74. The request sought documents showing the cookies on plaintiffs’ devices and browsers for every device and browser used to access healthcare providers’ websites and patient portals. The order applied to all related actions.
Meta identified three reasons for seeking the documents. It said the information could help it defend against plaintiffs’ allegations that Meta used its Pixel to collect health information for targeted advertising and that plaintiffs had a reasonable expectation of privacy in information shared online. Meta also said the documents could help defend against plaintiffs’ contention that Meta alone caused their alleged harm. Finally, Meta argued that differences among plaintiffs in accepting or tolerating non-Meta third-party cookies could inform its opposition to class certification.
Plaintiffs objected that Meta’s answer did not include a defense based on non-Meta cookies and that Meta had not identified those cookies in response to an interrogatory about its factual and legal bases for opposing class certification. Plaintiffs also argued that the request was overly broad because it covered cookies unrelated to collecting or sharing health information, some of which could raise serious privacy concerns. They further argued that Meta had waited more than a year to seek court intervention and that creating a protocol at that stage could delay the case.
Discussion and ruling
The court concluded that documents showing third-party cookies capable of collecting or sharing plaintiffs’ health information were relevant to the claims and defenses. The court was not persuaded that Meta had to plead “non-Meta cookies” as an affirmative defense or mention them in its answer before seeking evidence that could negate elements of plaintiffs’ claims. The court also found the discovery relevant to anticipated arguments about class certification.
The court agreed with plaintiffs, however, that RFP 74 was too broad because it covered all cookies regardless of whether they could collect or share health information. The court noted that the parties had not adequately cooperated in narrowing the request but declined to relieve plaintiffs of producing clearly relevant documents merely because Meta sought court intervention later than it should have.
The court ordered the following:
- Plaintiffs had to produce documents sufficient to show all third-party cookies on their relevant devices and browsers that were capable of collecting or sharing health information.
- Plaintiffs were not required to conduct a burdensome analysis of the very large number of cookies. By April 30, 2025, Meta had to identify objective criteria plaintiffs could use to identify relevant cookies. Plaintiffs could rely on those criteria, but if they chose not to, they had to produce the entire list of third-party cookies on their relevant devices and browsers.
- Plaintiffs’ production was due no later than May 12,
- 4. Before production, the parties had to confer and agree on any additional privacy protections not already provided by the existing protective order. Those discussions could not delay production beyond May 12, 2025.
The order did not address plaintiffs’ apparent objection that Meta had not adequately disclosed its non-Meta cookies.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.