Opinion
C22-5975RSM
07-19-2023
TYLER JOHN BUCK, Plaintiff, v. EQUIFAX INFORMATION SERVICES, LLC, et al., Defendants
ORDER DENYING STIPULATED MOTION FOR PROTECTIVE ORDER
RICARDO S. MARTINEZ, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE.
This matter comes before the Court on the parties' Joint Stipulated Protective Order, Dkt. #49. The Court finds that the proposed Protective Order does not conform to the requirement that its “protection from public disclosure and use extends only to the limited information or items that are entitled to confidential treatment under the applicable legal principles” as stated by Local Rule 26(c)(2). Under the section entitled Confidential Material, the Court's model protective order instructs: “[t]he parties must include a list of specific documents such as ‘company's customer list' or ‘plaintiff's medical records;' do not list broad categories of documents such as ‘sensitive business material.'” The parties have not followed these instructions and instead lists the following: “[p]roprietary and confidential documents detailing practices and procedures the public dissemination of which could result in a competitive disadvantage to the disclosing party or potentially compromise data security and/or fraud prevention processes; confidential personal, business or financial information; private financial information; valuable research, development, commercial, financial, technical, and/or other proprietary information not specifically identified herein; commercial information (including information implicating privacy rights of third parties); and information otherwise generally unavailable to the public, or which may be privileged or otherwise protected from disclosure under state or federal statutes, court rules, case decisions, or common law.” Dkt. #49 at 1-2.
The Court finds that the parties have impermissibly left the door open to labeling a wide variety of documents as confidential, including categories that can be summed up as “sensitive business material.” The parties submit no argument to justify this departure from the model protective order's guidelines. Accordingly, this Motion will be denied.
Having reviewed the briefing, along with the remainder of the record, the Court hereby finds and ORDERS that the parties' Joint Stipulated Protective Order, Dkt. #49, is DENIED.