Third Party Not Required to Produce Hard Drives to Plaintiff Competitor; Court Limits Subpoena and Allows Third Party to Conduct its Own Search
Electronic Discovery Law:
Daimler Truck N. Am. LLC v. Younessi, 2008 WL 2519845 (W.D. Wash. June 20, 2008)
In this case, Daimler sued its former employee in Oregon district court for breach of his duty of loyalty, his confidentiality contract, and his common law duty not to convert confidential and proprietary information, based upon the employee’s departure and subsequent employment by a competitor, Cascadia. As part of that suit, Daimler served Cascadia with the third-party discovery requests at issue. The parties resolved most of their disagreements, but were unable to resolve Daimler’s request to search Cascadia’s computers for communications between Younessi and Jim Hebe (a former CEO of Daimler who was subsequently employed by Cascadia) and between Hebe and other Daimler employees. Cascadia moved to quash the subpoena and for a protective order because Daimler’s subpoena was both unduly burdensome and would require disclosing confidential trade secrets to a competitor.
Trade Secrets
Cascadia claimed that production of its hard drives would necessarily reveal its trade secrets. The court recognized Cascadia’s interest in keeping its trade secrets out of the public eye, and particularly away from its competitors. However, the court determined that the requested communications were highly relevant to the case. Since Daimler had shown sufficient good cause for the discovery, the court denied the motion to quash. However, the court also found that some form of protective order was appropriate. It discussed the manner in which the production should occur, and concluded that Cascadia should be allowed to conduct the search for responsive documents itself:
The Federal Rules provide for discovery of electronically stored information either in its original state, i.e. actual production and copying of hard drives, or in a reasonably usable form, i.e. print outs. Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(a)(1)(A). While this is consistent with the general scope of the…