United States District Court, D. Arizona
ORDER
James
A. Teilborg, Senior United States District Judge
On
April 2, 2018, the parties filed a stipulated request for a
protective order. (Doc. 87). On April 10, 2018, the Court
denied that request and issued the following Order:
Pending before the Court is a stipulated-to protective order
submitted by Plaintiff and one Defendant. The stipulation
offers the following justification: “Good cause exists
for entry of the Protective Order. In order to comply with
their respective disclosure obligations, the parties must
disclose information that is protected, private, and/or
confidential. Some of this information relates to Defendant
Amazon.com, Inc.'s confidential and proprietary business
information.” (Doc. 87 at 2). The actual proposed order
lists certain categories of documents that will be protected
and also states “‘Confidential Information'
means any information that is private, confidential, or
proprietary, including the following representative but
nonexclusive examples: ….” (Doc. 87-1 at 3).
Global protective orders are not appropriate. See AGA
Shareholders, LLC v. CSK Auto, Inc., 2007 WL 4225450, at
*1 (D. Ariz. Nov. 28, 2007). Rule 26(c) requires a party
seeking a protective order to show good cause for issuance of
such an order. Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(c)(1). “For good cause
to exist under Rule 26(c), ‘the party seeking
protection bears the burden of showing specific
prejudice or harm will result if no protective order is
granted.'” AGA Shareholders, 2007
WL 4225450, at *1 (emphasis added) (quoting Phillips v.
G.M. Corp., 307 F.3d 1206, 1210-11 (9th Cir. 2002)). The
party seeking protection “must make a
‘particularized showing of good cause with respect to
[each] individual document.'” Id.
(emphasis added) (quoting San Jose Mercury News, Inc. v.
U.S. Dist. Ct., 187 F.3d 1096, 1102 (9th Cir. 1999)).
Thus, “[t]he burden is on the party to requesting a
protective order to demonstrate that (1) the material in
question is a trade secret or other confidential information
within the scope of Rule 26(c), and (2) disclosure would
cause an identifiable, significant harm.” Foltz v.
State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 331 F.3d 1122, 1131 (9th
Cir. 2003) (quoting Deford v. Schmid Prods. Co., 120
F.R.D. 648, 653 (D. Md. 1987)).
Here, the language of the parties' proposed protective
order is too generalized to meet the requirements of Rule 26.
For example, it defines confidential information as
information that is confidential. It offers no explanation of
what information would be included or why it would need to be
protected. Accordingly, the stipulation will be denied.
Therefore, IT IS ORDERED that the
stipulation for a protective order (Doc. 87) is denied,
without prejudice.
(Doc. 88).
Almost
one year later, on March 6, 2019, the parties filed another
stipulated request for a protective order. (Doc. 134). The
new request does not cure the deficiencies identified in the
prior protective order. Specifically, it still seeks to
protect “Defendants' confidential and personal
information” (Doc. 134 at 2) but does not specify why
such information is entitled to protection.[1] Further, the
proposed order states: “The following is a list of
representative but not exclusive examples of the types of
confidential information that the parties may exchange:
…”. (Doc. 134-1 at 3). Thus, the parties still
seek an order that allows them to mark
“representative” items as confidential without
making any showing that such items are entitled to
protection. Finally, by way of example, the parties state
that they will mark “Email chains from Amazon and
Amazon UK, which reveal confidential internal business and
safety processes, and may implicate UK data privacy
laws.” (Doc. 134-1). If disclosing information violates
the law, the parties should not disclose it. The Court is
aware of no authority that would give this Court the power to
give the parties permission to violate the law.
Moreover,
discovery in this case has been ongoing since at least
December 2017. (Doc. 67). Discovery closes in May 2019. The
Court assumes discovery is close to complete. Thus, the Court
finds this late request for a protective order likely
untimely as the Court will not enter the Order retroactively
as to information already exchanged.
Based
on the foregoing, IT IS ORDERED that the
motion for protective order (Doc. 134) is denied.
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Notes:
[1] The Court is not even clear to whom
the parties refer when they say
...