Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms Inc.

Background

Meta served a document subpoena on non-party Apple Inc. and moved to compel Apple to produce documents responsive to that subpoena. The requests concerned documents sufficient to show Apple’s strategic plans and development efforts, if any, relating to what the Federal Trade Commission described as a market for virtual-reality dedicated fitness applications.

Meta and Apple had negotiated and narrowed the scope of the requests. Their remaining disagreement concerned how Apple had to search for and identify responsive documents. Meta argued that Apple should apply proposed search strings to electronically stored information held by particular Apple custodians for Requests for Production 2, 5–6, and 9–11. Apple maintained that it could meet its subpoena obligations without conducting those proposed custodial searches.

Court’s analysis

The court explained that a non-party’s obligations under a document subpoena issued under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 are similar to a party’s obligations under Rule 34. The court recognized that search terms are common in electronic discovery and may sometimes be the only practical way to identify potentially responsive documents from a large collection. But it held that applying search terms to custodial electronic information is not the only permissible method in every situation.

Because Meta requested documents “sufficient to evidence” specified information, rather than all documents in Apple’s possession, the court found it reasonable for Apple to identify employees with relevant knowledge about the existence and location of responsive documents and then conduct deliberate, focused searches. Apple confirmed that the custodians Meta had identified as likely to possess relevant documents were among the custodians from whom Apple was collecting and producing documents.

Meta’s principal concern was that Apple’s status as a competitor might cause competitive bias in Apple’s document review and production. Meta therefore characterized the proposed custodial searches as an “objective check.” The court found no support in the cited case law for assuming that Apple’s counsel and representatives could not comply with their Rule 45 obligations, and Meta identified no prior failure or other circumstance showing that an objective check was warranted.

Meta also argued that confidential statements by Apple’s counsel about Apple’s strategic plans and other matters appeared inconsistent with information Meta had obtained. Meta said the proposed searches were needed to prepare for questioning an Apple witness at a scheduled deposition. After considering that concern and confidential information submitted under seal, the court was not persuaded that the searches were necessary for Meta to explore the information relevant to its defenses during the deposition.

Disposition

The court denied Meta’s motion to compel. Because the court concluded that Apple did not need to apply search strings to custodial electronic information to comply with Meta’s subpoena, it did not decide whether the proposed search strings were too broad or would produce an unduly burdensome number of documents for review.