Calhoun v. Google LLC
- Yvonne Rogers
- 4:20-cv-05146
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 8
In Calhoun v. Google LLC, Judge Van Keulen granted motions to seal selected discovery materials, protecting Google’s confidential technical and business information.
The ruling affects the parties’ discovery filings and the public’s access to those court records. It protects specified portions of materials containing Google’s confidential technical and business information and, in one transcript, plaintiff health information.
What happened
In Calhoun v. Google LLC, the parties asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to keep materials connected to discovery disputes from public view.
The court explained that court records generally should be accessible to the public. Because these materials concerned discovery motions rather than the merits of the case, the court applied the lower “good cause” standard for sealing.
Judge Susan Van Keulen granted all eight motions to seal, either for specified redacted portions or, for some exhibits, the entire document. The sealed information included Google’s nonpublic technical and business information, internal systems, logs, identifiers, and related information, as well as some plaintiff health information and nonpublic regulatory-investigation information.
The detailed version
- Calhoun v. Google LLC · No. 4:20-cv-05146
- Yvonne Rogers
- Sept. 30, 2021
Background
The court considered eight administrative motions to file materials under seal: Docket Nos. 273, 280, 288, 289, 293, 296, 308, and 313. The materials were submitted in connection with discovery disputes, including motions to compel, hearing transcripts, submissions about preserving logs, and submissions about the status of discovery disputes.
Legal standard
The court stated that judicial records are generally presumed to be open to public inspection. For records connected to motions that are more than tangentially related to the merits of a case, a party must show “compelling reasons” for sealing. For records connected to motions that are not related, or are only tangentially related, to the merits, the lower “good cause” standard under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c) applies.
The court held that the good-cause standard applied because the information was submitted with discovery-related motions rather than motions concerning the merits of the case. The court also noted that it could reach different conclusions under a different standard or in a different context.
Ruling
Judge Susan Van Keulen granted Docket No. 273 as to specified redacted portions of the plaintiffs’ response concerning discovery disputes. The court found those portions narrowly tailored to protect confidential technical information about Google’s products and systems and confidential business information that Google ordinarily keeps confidential and that is not generally known to the public or Google’s competitors.
The court granted Docket No. 280 as to specified redacted portions of a June 2, 2021 hearing transcript. It granted Docket No. 288 as to specified redacted portions of an August 12, 2021 hearing transcript. The reasons included protecting confidential information about Google’s internal systems, operations, data structures, identifiers, cookies, proprietary functions, and, for Docket No. 288, plaintiff health information.
The court granted Docket No. 289 as to specified redacted portions of the plaintiffs’ motion to compel and related filings, including a declaration and Exhibits A, B, C, D, E, F, I, J, K, and L. The exhibits were sealed in their entirety. The court cited Google’s confidential technical and business information, including information requested by the States of Texas and Arizona and the Federal Trade Commission in confidence.
The court granted Docket No. 293 as to specified redacted portions of a joint submission concerning preservation of logs. It granted Docket No. 296 as to specified redacted portions of Google’s opposition to the plaintiffs’ motion to compel production of regulator documents. It granted Docket No. 308 as to a specified redacted portion of a September 8, 2021 order. It granted Docket No. 313 as to specified redacted portions of a joint submission about the status of discovery disputes.
The reasons for the remaining rulings included protecting nonpublic information about Google’s products, systems, logs, internal operations, projects, identifiers, cookies, personnel, business information, and regulatory investigations. The order did not decide the merits of the underlying case.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.