Rodriguez v. Google LLC
- Richard Seeborg
- 3:20-cv-04688
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Rodriguez v. Google LLC, Judge Tse found some deposition requests premature, denied one, and required written discovery first.
The order affected the plaintiffs’ requests to obtain testimony from Google and Google’s obligations concerning document production, written discovery, and depositions in the case.
What happened
In Rodriguez v. Google LLC, the plaintiffs asked the court to require Google to provide company witnesses to testify about six discovery topics.
The court found Topics 1–3 premature because Google had not finished producing related documents, allowing the plaintiffs to request those depositions later. It said Topic 2 was not definitively moot because the plaintiffs might amend their complaint. The court denied a witness request about Google’s document-preservation efforts because the plaintiffs had not identified a specific problem, and directed the parties to address other subjects and document-location questions through written questions first.
Judge Tse ordered the parties to meet and discuss a schedule for completing the written discovery that should come before the company-witness depositions.
The detailed version
- Rodriguez v. Google LLC · No. 3:20-cv-04688
- Richard Seeborg
- June 4, 2021
Background
The plaintiffs moved to compel Google to provide one or more witnesses under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6). That rule allows a party to require an organization to designate witnesses to testify about specified subjects. The motion covered six topics.
Rulings on the Discovery Requests
The court ruled that Topics 1–3 were premature because Google had not finished producing documents related to those topics. The plaintiffs may re-notice those topics after Google substantially completes the related document production.
The court discussed Topic 2 separately because it appeared to concern the plaintiffs’ “secret scripts” theory. Judge Seeborg had previously described that theory as “woefully underdeveloped” in the then-operative complaint and had allowed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint. Because the pleadings had not yet been settled, the court could not definitively conclude that Topic 2 was moot.
The court denied the request for a witness about Google’s document-preservation efforts. It found that the plaintiffs had not identified a specific deficiency in those efforts. The court described the requested inquiry as “discovery on discovery,” meaning discovery into how a party handled its preservation duties in the litigation.
The opinion also states that requests concerning certain subjects and the locations of certain documents should first be addressed through interrogatories, or written questions. If the plaintiffs later show that testimony is needed to supplement the written discovery, they may renew their request to compel a witness.
Order
The parties were ordered to meet and confer by June 11, 2021, about a schedule for completing the written discovery that should precede the Rule 30(b)(6) depositions. The order was signed by Alex G. Tse, United States Magistrate Judge.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.