Estate of Antonio Thomas v. County of Sacramento ( 2021 )

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 9 FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 10 11 ESTATE OF ANTONIO THOMAS, et al., No. 2:20-cv-0903 KJM DB 12 Plaintiffs, 13 v. ORDER 14 COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO et al., 15 Defendants. 16 17 On October 4, 2021, defendants filed a motion to retain confidentiality and noticed the 18 motion for hearing before the undersigned on November 12, 2021, pursuant to Local Rule 19 302(c)(1). (ECF No. 68.) On November 5, 2021, the partied filed a Joint Statement re Discovery 20 Disagreement pursuant to Local Rule 251. (ECF No. 74.) 21 The undersigned’s Standard Information re discovery disputes set forth on the court’s web 22 page explains that parties must meet and confer prior to filing a discovery motion and “must 23 again confer in person or via telephone or video conferencing” prior to the filing of the joint 24 statement. See http://www.caed.uscourts.gov/caednew/index.cfm/judges/all-judges/united-states- 25 magistrate-judge-deborah-barnes-db. Here, the parties did not meet and confer after the filing of 26 the discovery motion. (JS (ECF No. 74) at 11-12.) 27 Defendants’ motion, therefore, will be denied without prejudice to renewal. The parties 28 should engage in further meet and confer, in compliance with the Local Rules and the 1 undersigned’s Standard Information. The following observations are provided to aid the parties’ 2 discussions. 3 “The discovery process in theory should be cooperative and largely unsupervised by the 4 district court.” Sali v. Corona Regional Medical Center, 884 F.3d 1218, 1219 (9th Cir. 2018). 5 “When that cooperation breaks down, the district court has broad discretion to regulate discovery 6 conduct and, if needed, impose a wide array of sanctions.” Infanzon v. Allstate Insurance 7 Company, 335 F.R.D. 305, 311 (C.D. Cal. 2020). Here, the parties have repeatedly come before 8 the court for the hearing of discovery disputes. Those hearings have largely concerned the same 9 issue raised by the instant motion—whether certain documents should be subject to a protective 10 order. 11 The parties’ Joint Statement fails to discuss any document with specificity and is instead 12 comprised of vague arguments. Each party would undoubtedly cast the blame for this on the 13 other. But each side has possession of these documents. And either one could have made use of 14 that access to provide specificity, which would aid the court and might support a meritorious 15 argument. It is not sufficient simply for the parties to raise a dispute and dump the documents at 16 the foot of the court. 17 Moreover, the documents at issue number in the hundreds. A superficial review of the 18 documents finds some documents that would appear to at least raise the specter of confidentiality 19 concerns, while others less so. Under such circumstances the undersigned is not going to order 20 the blanket protection or removal of protection from these documents based on vague briefing. 21 Ultimately, the parties’ must satisfy their meet and confer obligations. If they cannot 22 resolve their dispute, they can proceed to bring the matter before the undersigned. In doing so 23 they should be prepared to present briefing with sufficient specificity to enable the undersigned to 24 resolve their conflict as to each document at issue or category of documents. Given the number 25 of documents at issue the parties may want to prepare to come repeatedly before the undersigned 26 for serial motion hearings. Under such circumstances the parties should also be prepared for the 27 losing party to pay serial sanctions. 28 //// 1 Finally, the undersigned notes that plaintiffs make repeated reference to in camera review. 2 “In Camera review is not generally favored” and “the court should not conduct such a review 3 solely because a party begs it to do so.” Nishika, Ltd. v. Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., 181 F.R.D. 4 465, 467 (D. Nev. 1998). “In camera review should not replace the effective adversarial testing 5 of the claimed privileges and protections.” Diamond State Ins. Co. v. Rebel Oil Co., Inc., 157 6 F.R.D. 691, 700 (D. Nev. 1994). The undersigned has no intention of reviewing hundreds of 7 documents in camera in the absence of the parties’ satisfying their obligations. 8 Accordingly, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that: 9 1. Defendants’ October 4, 2021 motion for protective order (ECF No. 68) is denied 10 without prejudice to renewal; and 11 2. The November 12, 2021 hearing is vacated. 12 DATED: November 9, 2021 /s/ DEBORAH BARNES UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 DLB:6 25 DB/orders/orders.civil/thomas0903.m&c.ord 26 27 28