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District Court: California privacy laws do not absolve discovery obligations in federal litigation

Privacy/Cyber Risk & Data Security Courts Discovery CCPA State Issues California

Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security

Last month, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted plaintiffs’ motion to compel defendants’ responses to a request for production of documents after determining that defendants may not rely on the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) or other state laws to avoid discovery obligations in federal litigation. In 2020, the plaintiffs brought numerous claims, including violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and several related state law claims, alleging the defendants took the plaintiffs’ client database, marketing software, and computer to start their own business. After being served with a request for production of documents, the defendants asserted that producing the information would violate various California privacy laws, including the CCPA, the California Information Privacy Act, the California Privacy Rights Act, and Article 1, Section 1 of the California Constitution. The plaintiffs countered that the defendants’ objection should be overruled, as they had failed to establish “that there exists a reasonable right of privacy to the information sought to be disclosed,” arguing, among other things, that the defendants’ privacy concern “is undermined by their failure to enter into, or otherwise seek, a protective order.”

The court agreed with the plaintiffs, concluding that the defendants’ privacy objection is without merit. According to the court, the California privacy rights asserted by the defendants were not applicable in this discovery proceeding because “even to the extent the California constitution and these California statutes create a privilege—which this Court does not decide here—only federal law on privilege applies in cases, such as this one, involving federal question jurisdiction.” Although the court noted that a federal law counterpart to California’s privacy laws does not exist, it affirmed that “federal courts recognize a right of privacy implicit in Rule 26.” Nevertheless, the court stated that, “to the extent such a privacy interest exists, ‘corporations have a lesser right to privacy than human beings and are not entitled to claim a right to privacy in terms of a fundamental right, [although] some right to privacy exists.” Moreover, “[c]ourts routinely have found that a corporation’s privacy rights may give way where the information requested is material, not available from another source, and protected from disclosure by a protective order.” The court ultimately found that “a proper balancing of the competing interests weighs in favor of granting” the plaintiff’s discovery requests, adding that the defendants did not offer or suggest any alternative means by which the plaintiff could obtain the information and that a protective order would mitigate any risk of harm.