Betty's Best, Inc. v. The Facebook Advertisers Listed on Schedule A

Background

Betty’s Best, Inc. filed an emergency request seeking to stop alleged intellectual-property infringement by 592 Facebook advertisers. The court had previously allowed Betty’s Best to subpoena Meta Platforms, Inc. for the advertisers’ names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and physical addresses, if available, so the advertisers could be served with the lawsuit. Certain defendants moved to quash, or block, the subpoena.

The defendants argued that Betty’s Best already knew their identities and contact information through an earlier related case in the Southern District of Florida. The court explained that the defendants in this case were identified by Facebook advertiser accounts, while those in the Florida case were identified by websites. The moving defendants included 90 Facebook advertisers associated with 85 websites. Only 60 of those defendants were named as corresponding websites in the Florida case, leaving 30 defendants for whom that case provided no information. Of the 60 named there, only 55 filed corporate disclosure statements, and none of those statements supplied contact or physical-address information. The defendants also had not authorized their Florida counsel to accept service in this case.

Legal standard

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 governs subpoenas seeking discovery from nonparties. Its discovery scope is the same as the scope under Rule 26(b). Rule 26(b) permits discovery of nonprivileged information relevant to a claim or defense when the discovery is proportional to the case’s needs. Rule 45 requires a court to quash or modify a subpoena requiring disclosure of privileged or protected material, or imposing an undue burden. The court may also quash or modify a subpoena requiring disclosure of commercial information.

Court’s analysis

The court noted that Certain Defendants did not argue that the subpoena sought privileged or protected material, imposed an undue burden, or required disclosure of commercial information. Instead, they argued that the subpoena sought unnecessary information because they had already identified themselves.

The court rejected that argument. The Florida case did not identify 30 of the moving defendants, and the available corporate disclosures did not provide enough information to serve the other defendants. Because the defendants had not authorized their Florida counsel to accept service in this action, the court concluded that good cause supported obtaining their identifying information from Meta. The court stated that the defendants’ position effectively sought to prevent service by withholding that information.

Disposition

The court denied Certain Defendants’ motion to quash. The opinion does not state that the court decided the underlying intellectual-property claims.