In re Google RTB Consumer Privacy Litigation

Background

Plaintiffs are Google account holders who allege that Google improperly sells or discloses their personal and private information to third-party companies through Google’s real-time bidding advertising process. Google denies that real-time bidding operates as plaintiffs allege and denies sharing account holders’ personal information without consent.

The case includes claims for breach of contract, breach of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing, intrusion upon seclusion, publication of private information, breach of confidence, violation of the California Information Privacy Act, and violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief, damages, restitution, and disgorgement.

This order concerned Google’s requests for documents from plaintiffs. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1), discovery must concern information relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering factors such as the importance of the issues, the amount at stake, access to information, the parties’ resources, and the burden of the discovery.

Rulings on the Document Requests

- Requests 3, 5, 6, 13, 14, and 22: The court found the dispute moot because the parties appeared to agree that plaintiffs could review potentially responsive documents identified through search terms and produce the responsive documents. The opinion states that a plaintiff who believed a responsive document was privileged could not simply withhold it unilaterally, but the relevant sentence is incomplete in the provided text. - Request 1: Google sought information from forensic images of plaintiffs’ devices, including privacy settings, browsers, private-browsing methods, and browsing history. The court found the requested information relevant because plaintiffs’ claims and Google’s defenses placed plaintiffs’ online conduct, privacy settings, application permissions, cookie use, and efforts to remain anonymous at issue. The court ordered production of the narrowed subset identified in the parties’ joint submission and directed the parties to confer about any disagreement over what information fell within that scope. - Request 23: Google sought information about plaintiffs’ efforts to prevent personalized or targeted advertisements. The court found that information relevant to liability and damages and ordered plaintiffs to produce the narrowed subset of information. - Request 2: Google sought documents about online advertisements shown to plaintiffs. The court ordered plaintiffs to produce whatever evidence they had of an advertisement if they contended that the advertisement resulted from the real-time bidding process. The parties were directed to confer about preservation and identification of post-complaint advertisements, including whether Google already had records of those advertisements. - Request 17: Google sought plaintiffs’ Google account information, including My Activity, Bookmarks, and Analytics activity. The court did not require plaintiffs to produce documents because Google appeared to possess the requested information. However, plaintiffs had to execute the necessary consents under the Stored Communications Act so Google could access that information. The consents were due by May 2, 2022.

Disposition and Effect

The court required plaintiffs to produce documents responsive to requests 1, 2, and 23, with the limitations described in the order. It found the disputes over requests 3, 5, 6, 13, 14, and 22 moot. It did not require document production for request 17 but required the specified consents. The parties were ordered to confer about the production schedule and other implementation details.

Judge Virginia K. Demarch’s order addressed discovery only. It did not decide the merits of plaintiffs’ claims or Google’s defenses.