Meta Platforms, Inc. v. BrandTotal Ltd.

Background

Meta Platforms, Inc. asked the court to decide whether its motion for discovery sanctions and supporting documents should be filed under seal based on confidentiality designations by BrandTotal Ltd. and Unimania, Inc., which the opinion collectively calls “BrandTotal.” The sanctions motion sought, among other relief, an instruction that the factfinder at trial could presume certain facts to be true. BrandTotal separately moved to file under seal its motion to exclude expert testimony.

Court’s analysis

The court stated that the sanctions motion was more than tangentially related to the merits of the case, so the requests to seal related briefing and evidence had to meet the “compelling reasons” standard. The court found that BrandTotal’s response did not explain Meta’s proposed redactions specifically enough. The examples included descriptions of BrandTotal’s efforts to gather documents in response to discovery requests, general descriptions of its operations, and explanations of data-collection methods it no longer used.

The court also found that BrandTotal’s declaration supporting its request to seal materials related to its expert-testimony motion made only general claims of confidentiality and did not identify which parts of the expert reports contained BrandTotal’s confidential information, as opposed to Meta’s. The court stated that, absent an extraordinary showing of need, it did not intend to seal the expert reports in their entirety.

Order

The court ordered BrandTotal to provide a second declaration for each sealing motion by March 9, 2022. The declarations had to narrow the sealing requests and provide a more detailed explanation of why sealing was necessary. The court also continued each party’s deadline to respond to the opponent’s request concerning materials related to the expert-testimony motions until March 9, 2022. The order was signed by Judge Joseph C. Spero.