Brown v. Google LLC
- Yvonne Rogers
- 4:20-cv-03664
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Brown v. Google LLC, Judge Van Keulen granted four motions to seal specified portions of discovery materials protecting confidential Google information and plaintiff health information.
The order affects the parties’ discovery submissions and the public’s access to specified portions of court records. It protects confidential Google business and technical information and plaintiff health information from public disclosure.
What happened
In Brown v. Google LLC, the parties asked the court to keep certain portions of materials connected to discovery disputes from public view.
The court said court records are generally presumed open to the public. Because these materials concerned discovery-related motions, the court applied the lower standard requiring a showing of good cause. The requested redactions concerned Google’s internal systems, operations, identifiers, cookies, communications, proprietary functions, financial projections, and, in one transcript, plaintiff health information.
The court granted all four motions as to the specified redacted portions. Judge Susan Van Keulen found the redactions narrowly tailored to protect confidential information that Google kept private in the ordinary course of business and that was not generally known to the public or Google’s competitors.
The detailed version
- Brown v. Google LLC · No. 4:20-cv-03664
- Yvonne Rogers
- Sept. 30, 2021
Background
The court considered four administrative motions to file materials under seal in connection with discovery disputes. The requests concerned a June 2, 2021 hearing transcript, a joint submission about custodians and search terms, an August 12, 2021 hearing transcript, and a joint submission about the status of discovery disputes.
Legal standard
Court records generally carry a strong presumption of public access. The required showing depends on how the records relate to the case. Records connected more than tangentially to the underlying claims require compelling reasons for sealing, while records connected to discovery-related motions may be sealed under the lower good-cause standard in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c). The court also noted that parties must follow the procedures in Civil Local Rule 79-5.
Rulings
The court applied the good-cause standard because the information was submitted in connection with discovery-related motions.
- Docket No. 255: The court granted the motion as to specified redacted portions of the June 2, 2021 hearing transcript. The redactions protected confidential technical information about Google’s internal systems and operations, including internal policies, data structures, identifiers, cookies, and proprietary functions. - Docket No. 257: The court granted the motion as to specified redacted portions on pages 3 and 4 of the joint submission concerning custodians and search terms. The redactions protected information about Google’s internal systems and operations, internal cookies and identifiers, projects and proprietary functions, and Google’s internal communications and practices concerning Incognito. - Docket No. 260: The court granted the motion as to specified redacted portions of the August 12, 2021 hearing transcript. The redactions protected confidential technical information about Google’s internal systems, data structures, internal identifiers, and proprietary functions, as well as plaintiff health information. - Docket No. 280: The court granted the motion as to specified redacted portions on pages 27, 37, 41, 43, and 44 of the joint submission about the status of discovery disputes. The redactions protected information about Google’s internal systems and operations, cookies, internal identifiers, financial projections, internal communications and practices concerning Incognito and the X-Client-Data header, and proprietary functions.
Judge Susan Van Keulen concluded that the redactions were narrowly tailored to protect information Google maintained as confidential in the ordinary course of business and that was not generally known to the public or Google’s competitors.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.