Opinion
CV-22-00916-PHX-JAT
10-25-2022
Jeffrey James Stoneman, Plaintiff, v. Experian Information Solutions Incorporated, et al., Defendants.
ORDER
JAMES A. TEILBORG, SENIOR, DISTRICT JUDGE
Pending before the Court is the parties' joint motion for a protective order. (Doc. 36). The parties seek an “umbrella” protective order because “[m]any of the documents expected to be produced in this case contain confidential and proprietary information that could be used by Defendant's competitors to gain an unfair advantage.” (Doc. 36 at 2, 7). The entirety of the reason argued by the motion is, “Here, the information that will likely be sought in discovery as this case progresses includes information about Defendant's processes for receiving, maintaining, and reporting confidential credit information. Rather than burdening the Court and delaying discovery in this case by objecting to disclosure of such information and requiring a document-by-document review to determine confidentiality, the Parties seek an umbrella protective order which permits them to designate certain information as confidential.” (Doc. 36 at 7).
Global protective orders are not appropriate. See AGA Shareholders, LLC v. CSK Auto, Inc., 2007 WL 4225450, at *1 (D. Ariz. Nov. 28, 2007). However, in some circumstances, umbrella protective orders are permissible. 8A Charles A. Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2035, at 145-46 (4th ed. 2010). Before such orders may be issued, however, the movant must make a preliminary showing of good cause, which requires limiting the scope of the protective order to well-defined categories for which the existence of good cause can be determined. IceMOS Tech. Corp. v. Omron Corp., No. CV 17-02575-PHX-JAT (D. Ariz. Dec. 20, 2018) (Doc. 87) (granting a protective order limited to two categories); with Rose v. Dignity Health, No. CV-21-00775-PHX-JAT, 2021 WL 5084277, at *1-3 (D. Ariz. Nov. 2, 2021) (denying a requested protective order where the parties did not indicate whether a list of categories was “the universe of what they intend[ed] to mark confidential”); see also Gann v. Gen. Motors LLC, No. CV-22-00080-TUC-RM, 2022 WL 3552484, at *3-4 (D. Ariz. Aug. 18, 2022).
In this case, the proposed protective order would permit the parties to mark as confidential, “documents and information relating to trade secrets, confidential research, development, technology or other proprietary information belonging to the defendants, and/or personal income, credit and other confidential information of Plaintiff.” (Doc. 361 at 2). These categories are so broad and undefined that the protective order sought herein has crossed from an “umbrella” protective order (limited to certain categories of documents) to a global protective order which would effectively permit everything to be marked confidential. Additionally, the joint motion makes no effort to make a good cause showing as to each category of documents it seeks to include for protection. For these reasons, the joint motion for protective order will be denied.
Based on the foregoing, IT IS ORDERED that the joint motion for protective order (Doc. 36) is denied without prejudice.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that, if the parties again seek a protective order, they must submit a proposed form of protective order to the chambers' email address in an editable format.