Rodriguez v. Google LLC
- Richard Seeborg
- 3:20-cv-04688
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 1
In Rodriguez v. Google, Judge Tse granted in part a motion to seal, allowing project names to remain sealed but requiring disclosure of search-term hit counts.
The ruling affected Google LLC, the plaintiffs, and the public’s access to parts of the parties’ letter brief. Google’s internal project names could remain sealed, while electronic-discovery search-term hit counts had to remain publicly available.
What happened
Rodriguez v. Google LLC concerned whether parts of the parties’ January 7, 2022, letter brief should be kept from public view.
The court allowed Google’s internal project names to be sealed and replaced with redacted names. It did not allow the parties to seal electronic-discovery search-term hit counts.
Judge Tse ordered the parties to file a public version of the letter brief by February 17, 2022, following the order. The request to seal was granted in part.
The detailed version
- Rodriguez v. Google LLC · No. 3:20-cv-04688
- Richard Seeborg
- Feb. 10, 2022
Background
The parties asked the court to seal portions of a January 7, 2022, letter brief. The request included Google’s internal project names and the number of results produced by electronic-discovery search terms.
Ruling
The court granted the request to seal in part. Google’s internal project names could be sealed and replaced with the redacted names “Na,” “K,” and “T***.” The court did not permit the electronic-discovery search-term hit counts to be sealed. It found that Google had not shown specific prejudice or harm from publicly disclosing those counts and stated that sealing them would hinder the public’s understanding of the dispute. The court also noted that it had considered the hit counts in deciding which electronic-discovery searches needed to be run.
The parties were ordered to file a public version of the January 7 letter brief complying with the order by February 17, 2022.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.