Crowder v. LinkedIn Corporation

Background

This is a putative antitrust class action (a lawsuit filed on behalf of a proposed group of plaintiffs alleging anticompetitive conduct) concerning the market for professional social networking. The operative complaint alleges that LinkedIn's business is protected by a barrier to entry involving data, machine learning, and inference, and that LinkedIn's integration with its parent company Microsoft's Azure cloud platform deterred competition.

Between 2019 and 2022, LinkedIn publicly stated it would migrate its entire business onto Azure and close its own data centers — a plan known internally as "Blueshift." In December 2023, it was publicly reported that the plan had been paused.

The parties had litigated Azure-related discovery previously. The court had adopted a compromise proposed by LinkedIn: LinkedIn would produce documents showing (1) the migration was never restarted, and (2) the extent of its use of Azure, followed by a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition (a procedure under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allowing a party to depose a corporation by requiring it to designate knowledgeable witnesses on specified topics). LinkedIn produced only two documents in response. The court then denied without prejudice a motion by plaintiffs to compel further documents, directed the parties to proceed with the Rule 30(b)(6) deposition, and preserved plaintiffs' right to renew their motion to compel if the deposition testimony proved inadequate.

Pursuant to a July 17, 2026 discovery order, plaintiffs served their Rule 30(b)(6) notice on July 31, 2026. LinkedIn served objections on August 18, 2026, and designated two individuals as its witnesses. After a court-ordered meet-and-confer, the parties resolved Topics 1 through 4 but could not agree on Topics 5, 6, and 7. The parties filed a joint discovery letter brief on September 3, 2026.

The Three Disputed Topics

Topic 5 — Azure Integration

Topic 5 sought testimony about LinkedIn's integration with Microsoft Azure across four subparts: (a) which LinkedIn systems, applications, or workloads have run on or been moved to Azure, and when; (b) LinkedIn's purchases of Azure services and GPU and other AI computing capacity from Microsoft; (c) LinkedIn's Azure spending, commitments, and forecasts; and (d) LinkedIn's plans for future use of Azure.

LinkedIn objected that Topic 5 was disproportionate because it had already produced documents sufficient to show its Azure usage and spending. At the meet-and-confer, LinkedIn indicated it would prepare witnesses only "at a general level" — covering the contemplated migration and its pause — but would not prepare them on current workloads, capacity purchases, or Azure pricing.

Topics 6 and 7 — Pricing Systems and Methodology

Topics 6 and 7 concern the systems and methodology LinkedIn uses to price its paid subscription products (Premium Career, Premium Business, Premium Company Page, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter Lite). The court had previously set a January 2014 lookback period for associated document discovery. Plaintiffs contended LinkedIn would limit its witnesses to 2018 forward.

Topic 7(c)

LinkedIn agreed to provide testimony on Topic 6 and most of Topic 7, but declined to prepare a witness on Topic 7(c), a specific sub-topic within the pricing methodology topic. LinkedIn offered no argument for this carve-out in its statement.

Legal Standards Applied

The court applied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b), which allows discovery of any nonprivileged matter relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case. Discovery is accorded broad and liberal treatment, and relevance is not an overly exacting standard. The party moving to compel bears the initial burden of showing relevance and proportionality; the party resisting discovery bears the burden of supporting its objections with competent evidence.

Under Rule 30(b)(6), a corporation must designate witnesses knowledgeable on noticed topics and make a good-faith effort to prepare them to fully and unevasively answer questions about the designated subject matter — but the rule does not require preparation on every facet of the litigation.

Rulings

Topic 5 — Ordered in Full

The court ordered LinkedIn to prepare its designated witnesses to testify to Topic 5 as written, including all four subparts. The court reasoned that its prior orders had made this deposition the mechanism for testing whether LinkedIn's two-document production adequately showed the extent of its Azure use. A witness prepared only to narrate the pause in the migration, but unable to address current workloads, capacity purchases, spending, or future plans, could not serve that function — it would effectively collapse the compromise's requirement to show "the extent of its use of Azure" into the separate requirement that the migration was never restarted.

The court also rejected LinkedIn's reading of a prior order's observation that the "core requests" concerned the "scope and status" of the migration, explaining that those observations addressed document adequacy in the same order that directed the deposition as the testing mechanism. Reading "migration" to exclude present and planned Azure use would leave plaintiffs no way to make the inadequacy showing that the prior order contemplated.

On proportionality, the court found Topic 5 proportionate: it is one subject divided into four particularized subparts tracking prior orders, not a catch-all demand; its relevance is concrete given the complaint's allegations; and the burden is modest because LinkedIn had already designated two witnesses, with commercial sensitivity manageable under existing protective and sealing procedures.

The court noted the closest question was whether the deposition must reach the specific prices and commercial terms of LinkedIn's Azure purchases from Microsoft, and considered a narrower alternative (requiring preparation on categories, magnitudes, and aggregate amounts but not unit pricing or negotiated terms). The court ultimately declined to adopt that limit, reasoning that the deposition notice defines the scope, the complaint's barrier-to-entry theory makes intercompany terms probative, the court intended the deposition to allow plaintiffs to test their theories, and the discovery is proportional.

Topics 6 and 7 — January 2014 to Present

The court ordered LinkedIn's witnesses to cover Topics 6 and 7 from January 1, 2014, to the present. The court found that the January 2014 lookback period was already established by its prior order on associated document discovery, that prices charged immediately before any class period are material to the economic analysis of prices during it, and that LinkedIn's own statement had agreed to cover dates "consistent with the date ranges in the Court's order on the associated document requests" — which was the January 2014 lookback.

Topic 7(c) — Ordered

The court ordered LinkedIn to prepare a witness on Topic 7(c). LinkedIn offered no argument for the carve-out, and the court found that testimony on this sub-topic falls within the broader pricing systems and methodology topics, with no identified disproportionate burden.

Witness Preparation Standard

The court construed the "general level" qualifier from LinkedIn's objections: it is not a license to withhold noticed subjects. Within the topics as scoped by the order, LinkedIn must prepare witnesses to testify to information known or reasonably available to it, without unilateral subject-matter carve-outs. However, witnesses may reasonably rely on and explain produced documents and data rather than recite figures from memory. Precise data points are to be addressed through produced documents, not memory recall.

Disposition

The court ordered LinkedIn to prepare and produce witnesses on Topic 5 (in full, as written), Topics 6 and 7 (January 1, 2014 to the present), and Topic 7(c), with depositions understood to take place on September 8, 2026. The order resolved ECF Nos. 267-3 and 268.