Shared Partnership v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

Background

Shared Partnership submitted two discovery-dispute letter briefs seeking to compel discovery from Meta Platforms, Inc. The court described the letters as substantially similar and said Shared Partnership appeared to have brought the first dispute to court before Meta had fully stated its position. Meta argued that the request was premature and that the parties should continue working through the discovery process.

First discovery request: production deadline

Shared Partnership asked the court to require Meta to complete its entire document production by April 7, 2023. Shared Partnership pointed to the time that had passed and Meta’s resources. Meta responded that the 41 document requests were broad and included requests for documents concerning Shared Partnership, its rejected advertisements, and Meta’s general use of artificial intelligence to reject advertisements. Meta said it had agreed to produce narrower categories of documents, including materials concerning Shared Partnership’s rejected advertisements, related notifications, and communications between the parties.

Meta identified three remaining issues. First, it said it could not produce documents until the parties and the court entered a stipulated protective order. The court ordered the parties to promptly meet and confer in good faith about the order’s terms. The court recommended, but did not require, using the district’s model protective order as a starting point. If the parties could not agree, the court ordered them to present the remaining disputes clearly and concisely under the applicable standing order.

Second, Meta said it had identified tens of thousands of potentially responsive documents and that reviewing and producing materials related to Shared Partnership’s rejected advertisements would be time-consuming. Third, Meta had not provided a specific completion date because it was still searching for, reviewing, and gathering potentially responsive, non-privileged documents. Meta said it intended to produce documents on a rolling basis after the protective-order issue was resolved.

The court rejected Shared Partnership’s justification for imposing the April 7 deadline. It found that Meta’s resources and the passage of a few months did not justify arbitrarily setting that deadline. The court said production should proceed on a rolling basis after the protective-order dispute was resolved. It therefore denied Shared Partnership’s request to require completion of production by April 7, 2023.

Second discovery request: artificial-intelligence materials

Shared Partnership also sought an order stating that Meta’s use of artificial intelligence to reject advertisements—and what Meta did or did not know about artificial intelligence’s ability to explain rejections—was relevant and discoverable. The request concerned specified interrogatories and requests for production, but Shared Partnership did not attach those discovery requests to its letter brief.

The court found that Shared Partnership had not shown the broad request’s likely value. The court explained that a prior ruling allowing Shared Partnership’s fraud claim to survive dismissal found only that its allegations were plausible at the pleading stage. That earlier finding did not establish that broad discovery was appropriate during discovery. Based on the presentation before it, the court found that generalized information about Meta’s use of artificial intelligence to reject advertisements other than Shared Partnership’s advertisements would have little, if any, value in proving Shared Partnership’s claims.

The court also found that Shared Partnership had not justified the proportionality of the broad request. Under Rule 26, proportionality requires weighing the burden and expense of discovery against its likely benefit. The court found that Meta had made a convincing case that the requested discovery was disproportionate to the needs of this case. It therefore denied Shared Partnership’s request for a finding that Meta’s general use of artificial intelligence to reject other customers’ advertisements was discoverable.

Disposition

The court denied both discovery requests. It also admonished the parties to work together more efficiently and to seek court involvement in discovery disputes only as a last resort after reasonable cooperation and meet-and-confer efforts. The order did not decide the underlying claims or defenses.

The opinion was signed by Robert M. Illman, United States Magistrate Judge.