Garvey et al v. Kissmetrics et al
Filing
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ORDER by Judge Laurel Beeler on 273 Discovery Letter Brief. The court holds that the material that Hulu redacted from sealed Exhibits A and B to the parties' joint discovery letter is exempted from discovery by the attorney-client privilege. (lblc1S, COURT STAFF) (Filed on 1/21/2015)
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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
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NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
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San Francisco Division
United States District Court
Northern District of California
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JOSEPH GARVEY, et al.,
Case No. 11-cv-03764-LB
Plaintiffs,
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v.
ORDER ON PRIVILEGED
DOCUMENTS
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HULU, LLC,
[ECF No. 273]
Defendant.
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INTRODUCTION
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This is a discovery dispute. The court finds this matter suitable for determination without a
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hearing. See Civ. L.R. 7-1(b). The parties disagree over two documents that defendant Hulu, LLC
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argues are partly covered by the attorney-client privilege. The parties disagree mainly over
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whether those documents were kept sufficiently confidential. The court has reviewed the disputed
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material in camera and holds both that the documents were kept confidential and that they
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otherwise meet the criteria for the attorney-client privilege. The contested information is thus
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exempt from discovery.
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STATEMENT
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This dispute involves information contained in two documents, or “tickets,” generated by the
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“JIRA” system that Hulu uses to track issues with and changes to its software code. (See ECF No.
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273 at 1.)1 Hulu has produced both tickets under seal, but has redacted from them their allegedly
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privileged segments.
A brief explanation of the JIRA system will aid this discussion. When a customer or employee
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identifies a problem with the Hulu service, or when Hulu undertakes a project to change its
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software code, a Hulu employee who has “administrative permissions” on JIRA will create a JIRA
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“ticket” to address the pertinent issue. The person who creates a ticket is called the “Reporter.”
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The Reporter then assigns someone, the “Assignee,” to oversee the work. The Reporter or
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Assignee may “tag” other Hulu employees needed to resolve the problem; these additional
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participants are “Watchers.” Any of these people can “tag” other Hulu employees to ask questions
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relevant to the issue that the ticket covers. A JIRA ticket thus serves both to manage a project and
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Northern District of California
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to record that project’s activity. (See ECF No. 273 at 3-4.)
The parties’ current dispute centers on who can access JIRA and specific JIRA tickets.
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According to Hulu: “Only the Reporter, Assignee, and Watchers . . . generally receive
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notifications via email when the ticket is updated with a new activity.” (Id. at 4.) This apparently
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does not mean that only these people can access a ticket. Though the parties’ submissions do not
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nail this point down completely, it seems implicit in their arguments that any Hulu employee
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authorized to access JIRA can, by purposeful or inadvertent search, find a given ticket and see the
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communications and activity that it contains. Tickets, in other words, are not wholly restricted to
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their direct participants. Only Hulu employees, however, can access JIRA. (See id. at 3 (“Hulu
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employees can access the secure JIRA system using their corporate credentials . . . .”).) Hulu says
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that JIRA is “essential to managing [its] source code and website.” (Id. at 6.)
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This dispute involves information contained in two JIRA tickets. The first is titled “SR 4328.”
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The court calls this the “4328” ticket. This ticket involved “a bug that caused a deleted Facebook-
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connected Hulu account to remain connected to Facebook.” (Id. at 4.) Seven Hulu employees were
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brought onto the ticket to work on fixing the bug. (Id.) “In the course of addressing the issue,”
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Hulu writes, one of the participants, a software developer, “tagged Hulu in-house counsel Anne
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Record citations are to material contained in the Electronic Case File (“ECF”); pinpoint citations
are to the ECF-generated page numbers at the tops of documents.
ORDER ON PRIVILEGE – 11-3764 LB
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Bradley and, using the JIRA system, asked her for legal advice regarding the Facebook issue,
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which Ms. Bradley provided.” (Id.) The same developer also asked a Hulu vice president “a
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question that would enable Ms. Bradley to advise on the legal issue,” and the vice president
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responded. (Id.) Hulu contends that the “sole purpose” of the exchange with Ms. Bradley was for
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“securing legal advice.” (Id.) Hulu redacted this material from the filed, sealed version of 4328.
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The second ticket is titled “CORE 1130.” The court will call this the “1130” ticket. Seven
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Hulu employees were involved on the 1130 ticket “in either coding or overseeing [a] change” to
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Hulu’s code that would “remove the episode name from the watch page URLs on Hulu’s website.”
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(Id.) “In the course of addressing the issue,” a Hulu vice president “noted issues on which he
sought legal advice from Hulu’s in-house counsel,” and discussed “the implementation of what
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Hulu’s in-house counsel [had] told” him. (Id.) Hulu redacted this material from the filed, sealed
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version of 1130.
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The parties’ central dispute is over whether Hulu kept these documents sufficiently
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confidential to bring them within the attorney-client privilege. The technical issues addressed in
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both tickets, Hulu argues, raised legal questions. The employees needed the legal advice so that
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they could carry out their duties and fix the given technical issues; they thus turned to in-house
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counsel for, and obtained, that legal advice. (Id. at 3-5.)
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The plaintiffs argue (in sum) that confidentiality was destroyed by the fact that the JIRA
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system is generally accessible to Hulu employees beyond those immediately participating in the
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4328 and 1130 tickets. (See id. at 2.) The plaintiffs also believe that the redacted information may
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contain underlying facts relevant to their contention that Hulu knew it was sending Facebook
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information about the material that Hulu users were watching. (Id. at 1.) The plaintiffs rightly note
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that the attorney-client privilege does not protect facts contained in otherwise protected
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communications. (Id. at 3) (citing Upjohn Co. v. United States, 449 U.S. 383, 395-96 (1981)).
GOVERNING LAW
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The party asserting the attorney-client privilege has the burden of proving each requisite
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element of the privilege. E.g., United States v. Ruehle, 583 F.3d 600, 607 (9th Cir. 2009). “The
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attorney-client privilege protects confidential disclosures made by a client to an attorney in order
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to obtain legal advice, . . . as well as an attorney’s advice in response to such disclosures.” United
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States v. Bauer, 132 F.3d 504, 507 (9th Cir. 1997) (citing United States v. Chen, 99 F.3d 1495,
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1501 (9th Cir.1996)). This compact formulation contains the three most essential, and for this
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discussion most pertinent, parts of the privilege: the communication must be (1) with a lawyer (2)
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for the purpose of obtaining legal advice and (3) confidential. It is well established that
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“communications between corporate personnel and their in-house counsel made for the purpose of
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securing legal advice are protected by the privilege.” See, e.g., Chen, 99 F.3d at 1502.
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Communications within a corporation are often distributed in ways that draw additional rules
from the privilege doctrine. The plaintiffs rightly note that a “need to know” standard generally
governs whether the privilege shields communications that are disseminated to corporate
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Northern District of California
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employees. E.g., Scholtisek v. Eldre Corp., 441 F. Supp. 2d 459, 463-64 (W.D.N.Y. 2006). The
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test is straightforward: “[D]id the recipient need to know the content of the communication in
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order to perform her job effectively or to make informed decisions concerning, or affected by, the
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subject matter of the communication?” Id. (citing cases). “Only when the communications are
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relayed to those who do not need the information to carry out their work or make effective
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decisions on the part of the company is the privilege lost.” Id. at 464 (quoting Andritz Sprout-
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Bauer, Inc. v. Beazer East, Inc., 174 F.R.D. 609, 633 (M.D. Pa. 1997)). Furthermore, the privilege
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can “protect a communication between nonlegal employees in which the employees discuss or
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transmit legal advice given by counsel. Such communications obviously reveal privileged
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communications.” United States v. ChevronTexaco Corp., 241 F. Supp. 2d 1065, 1077 (N.D. Cal.
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2002); see United States v. Dish Network, L.L.C., 283 F.R.D. 420, 423 (C.D. Ill. 2012) (“The
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privilege also extends to communications about the privileged material between non-attorneys
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who are properly privy to the privileged information.”).
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ANALYSIS
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The court’s in camera review of the redacted material confirms that the information, and its
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dissemination within Hulu, are both as Hulu describes them. The attorney-client privilege shields
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this information from discovery.
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The character of the redacted content in both tickets falls within the privilege. The redactions
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from both tickets are, or discuss, communications with a lawyer made to secure legal advice.
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Ticket 4328 has Hulu employees directly asking their in-house attorney for, and receiving, legal
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advice concerning the task that they were working on. Hulu correctly writes that the “sole
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purpose” of the redacted material in 4328 was to secure legal advice. That is the dead center of
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what the attorney-client privilege covers.
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Ticket 1130 does not directly involve a lawyer. It does have Hulu employees “discussing” or
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“transmitting” legal advice that Hulu’s in-house counsel had already provided. See Chevron
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Texaco, 241 F. Supp. 2d at 1077. The people working on the 1130 issue used this information to
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“carry out their work” and make “informed,” “effective decisions” about the task at hand. See
Scholtisek, 441 F. Supp. 2d at 464; F.T.C. v. GlaxoSmithKline, 294 F.3d 141, 147-48 (D.C. Cir.
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Northern District of California
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2002) (holding that privilege covered material disseminated to employees who needed it for their
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work). This may indeed be said of the legal advice involved in both the 4328 and 1130 tickets. In
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both cases the redacted material therefore falls under the coverage of the attorney-client privilege.
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In neither case was the contested information disseminated too widely to maintain
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confidentiality. The JIRA system is not public. Only Hulu employees may access it. Both tickets,
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moreover, involved only those employees who were working on the given issues and who, again,
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sought or discussed the legal advice they needed to effectively address the problems before them.
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Confidentiality is not destroyed by the possibility that other Hulu employees, not directly
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participating in the 4328 and 1130 tickets, could have accessed those documents over the JIRA
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system. James Julian, Inc. v. Raytheon Co., 93 F.R.D. 138, 142 (D. Del. 1982) (“[T]hat some
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unauthorized personnel may purposely or inadvertently read a privileged document does not
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render that document nonconfidential.”). Material need not be “kept under lock and key to remain
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confidential” for purposes of the attorney-client privilege. See Dish Network, 283 F.R.D. at 425.
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“The privileged communications were properly limited to employees who reasonably needed the
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information to perform their duties for the corporation.” Id. The material was kept sufficiently
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confidential and is privileged.
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Finally, no part of the redacted material contains facts suggesting that Hulu knew what user
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information (if any) was being transmitted to Facebook. The only facts remotely of this sort, in
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either ticket, are conveyed in the respective documents’ headlines. That information was not
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redacted from either sealed ticket so the plaintiffs have it.
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CONCLUSION
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The court holds that the material that Hulu has redacted from the sealed exhibits to the parties’
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joint discovery letter (ECF No. 273) is exempt from discovery under the attorney-client privilege.
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This disposes of ECF No. 273.
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IT IS SO ORDERED.
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Dated: January 21, 2015
______________________________________
Laurel Beeler
United States Magistrate Judge
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United States District Court
Northern District of California
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