In re Sandisk SSDS Litigation
- Cisneros
- 3:23-cv-04152
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In re SANDISK SSDs LITIGATION: Judge Cisneros ordered private court review of eight documents to resolve remaining privilege disputes.
The plaintiffs and Defendants in In re SANDISK SSDs LITIGATION, particularly regarding the eight documents subject to the remaining privilege disputes.
What happened
In re SANDISK SSDs LITIGATION concerns the parties’ remaining disputes over Defendants’ claims that certain documents are protected by attorney-client or other privilege. The disputes involve eight documents or related collections: four Microsoft Teams chat threads, three email threads with attachments, and one PowerPoint presentation.
Plaintiffs asked the Court to review the documents privately. Defendants did not object and asked for permission to submit a declaration supporting their privilege designations. The Court ordered Defendants to send the documents for review by June 30, 2025.
Judge Cisneros also allowed each party to submit, by that date, a separate letter brief of no more than four pages and declarations supporting its position, although the parties could rely on their existing joint letter instead. If either party disputed that California law governed privilege, that party had to address the issue in its letter brief.
The detailed version
- In re Sandisk SSDS Litigation · No. 3:23-cv-04152
- Cisneros
- June 23, 2025
Background
The parties told the Court that they had narrowed their disputes concerning Defendants’ privilege assertions to eight documents or collections of related documents. These consisted of four Microsoft Teams chat threads, three email threads, including attachments, and one PowerPoint presentation. Plaintiffs requested an in camera review, meaning a private review of the documents by the Court. Defendants did not object to that request and asked for permission to submit a declaration supporting their privilege designations.
Court’s action
The Court determined that reviewing the limited group of documents in camera would be the most efficient way to resolve the remaining disputes. Based on Defendants’ non-objection, the Court ordered the review.
Defendants had to arrange with the Courtroom Deputy for the documents to be submitted to the Court by email or another method no later than June 30, 2025. By the same deadline, each party could submit a separate letter brief of no more than four pages and declarations supporting its position on whether the documents were privileged. The parties could instead rely on their existing joint letter and the Court’s knowledge of the relevant law. However, any party disputing that California law governed privilege had to address that issue in a letter brief.
Disposition and scope
The order arranged a process for resolving the privilege disputes; it did not decide whether any of the eight documents were privileged. The Court entered the order on June 23, 2025.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.