Grewal, Paul S., United States Magistrate Judge
In a theft of trade secrets and breach of confidentiality case, the trial court granted a third-party’s motion to quash because the subpoena seeking forensic examination of the third-party’s laptops was overbroad and unduly burdensome.
Defendant, a former employee of plaintiff’s, resigned and began working for plaintiff’s competitor. Plaintiff subsequently brought claims against defendant alleging a breach of his confidentiality agreement and violations of state trade secret laws.
Defendant used two computers at his new employer – one he used before the lawsuit and a second one after the suit was filed. Plaintiff issued a subpoena to the third party seeking production of the first assigned laptop.
After a meet-and-confer, the third party produced reports from the laptop that included files, extensive metadata of those files, web browsing history reports and reports from the USB drive input on the machine. Plaintiff was not satisfied and wanted a complete forensic examination of the computer. The third party refused this, but offered to have an independent vendor conduct a forensic examination of the laptop and produce any relevant information. Plaintiff did not agree and subsequently issued a subpoena seeking a forensic examination of both laptops.
Plaintiff argued it was entitled to the forensic examination in order to determine whether defendant had accessed plaintiff’s files using a thumb drive. Plaintiff also claimed that a forensic examination would show whether defendant had downloaded from his company Google Drive to the third party’s computers. The third party countered that a forensic examination of the laptops would be too invasive, revealing company trade secrets and confidential information.
The court agreed with the third party:
[T]he risks attached to forensic imaging are simply too great to permit such unchecked discovery. Forensic imaging remains highly invasive and engenders the risk of unanticipated, accidental disclosure of crown jewels. This threat is particularly pronounced in competitor-competitor litigation, like this one.
The court also rejected plaintiff’s request to have an independent discovery vendor examine the laptop. The court found that because plaintiff rejected that option when the third party proposed it, granting that to plaintiff would deter attorneys from being flexible during pretrial meet-and-confer.
v.
DONGCHUL LEE, Defendant