Epidemic Sound, AB v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

Background

Epidemic moved to reopen fact discovery for the limited purpose of requiring Meta to produce and log documents that Meta had withheld based on an asserted shared legal-interest protection. Epidemic sought the documents to the extent they related to communications that Epidemic had recently been ordered to produce. The fact-discovery cutoff was April 30, 2025.

Discovery ruling

The court stated that Meta had produced redacted versions of the only post-April 30, 2025 communications it considered relevant: one email thread between Meta’s counsel and counsel for a third-party distributor-indemnitor. The court found that the emails involved litigation strategy in this case and therefore constituted attorney work product. It also concluded that sharing the communications with the third party’s counsel did not waive that protection because the shared legal-interest doctrine can prevent waiver of work-product protection. Epidemic’s argument that the communications might instead concern business matters was unpersuasive to the court.

Epidemic also argued in reply that Meta was withholding documents involving non-indemnitor third parties. Meta represented that it had searched for responsive communications and had confirmed that it had no such post-April 30, 2025 communications that had not already been produced or were being withheld as protected. The court understood Meta’s representation to cover all such communications related to the recently produced communications.

Epidemic appeared also to challenge Meta’s failure to log communications from before the close of fact discovery. The court held Epidemic to the narrower relief requested in its proposed order, which sought only post-April 30, 2025 communications. The court further noted that the parties’ electronically stored information order allowed them not to log post-complaint communications involving counsel’s work product when a party believed work-product protection applied.

The court nevertheless found it unclear whether Meta was withholding as protected any pre-April 30, 2025 communications with the people or entities, or their lawyers, identified in the recently produced communications. The court stated that fairness required Epidemic to receive notice of such communications if Meta used the recently produced communications at trial or on summary judgment. The court therefore ordered Meta to log any communications relevant to those recently produced communications and provide the log to Epidemic by November 20, 2025.

Motions to seal

The court denied Meta’s motion to seal the highlighted portions of its opposition and Exhibit M. It found that Meta’s counsel’s declaration did not connect the proposed redactions to confidential information. Exhibit M was a one-page public court transcript, and the court found nothing confidential or nonpublic on that page. The court also found that the highlighted portions of the opposition did not reveal confidential business information.

The court found that Epidemic had shown good cause to seal pages 7 through 13 of Exhibit L to the Pizano Declaration. The court ordered Meta to file a fully unredacted version of its opposition and Exhibit M by November 3, 2025. It further ordered that future motions by Meta to seal its own confidential information include a sworn declaration from counsel stating that counsel personally reviewed the proposed redactions and certified that the sealing request was made in good faith.

Disposition

Judge Jacquelyn Corley denied Epidemic’s motion to reopen discovery, except for the required communications log. The court denied Meta’s motion to seal, allowed Epidemic to seal the specified pages of Exhibit L, and denied Meta’s request for fees. The order disposed of Docket Nos. 317, 326, and 327.