*1 1. The Court conducted a hearing on Defendant's motion to quash subpoenas that Plaintiff issued to third-parties. For the reasons stated at the hearing, the motion is DENIED. The following statement of decision briefly records that ruling.

2. This is a civil action involving allegations of housing discrimination against the owners of residential properties in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles. (Docket #1.) Plaintiffs wish to obtain documents via subpoenas issued under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 issued to third parties who bought properties from or sold properties to Defendants.

3. The subpoenas generally call for the production of all records associated with the transactions between the property owners and Defendants. Additionally, Plaintiffs seek the production of all communications related to the transactions. The third parties did not take any action (present objections, request a protective order, or move to quash any of the subpoenas) in this Court.[1]

4. Instead, Defendants filed a motion to quash on their own. The motion alleges that the subpoenas are overbroad, seek the production of irrelevant materials, will invade the attorney-client privilege, and are directed to confidential and proprietary items.

5. Defendants have a standing problem. By its plain text, Rule 45 does not expressly permit a party – that is, someone who is not the individual or entity subject to the subpoena – to file a quashal motion. This is clearly the conventional wisdom. “A motion to quash or for a protective order should be made by the person from whom the documents, things, or electronically stored information are requested. Numerous cases have held that a party lacks standing to challenge a subpoena absent a showing that the objecting party has a personal right or privilege regarding the subject matter.” 9A Wright, Miller & Marcus, Federal Practice & Procedure, § 2463.1 (3d ed. 2010 and supp.).

6. That conclusion is repeated in many decisions in the Central District – often citing or quoting Wright and Miller for this proposition. See, e.g., Dale Evans Pkwy 2012 LLC v. Nat. Fire and Marine Ins. Co., No. ED CV 15-979 JGB (SPx), 2016 WL 7486606 (C.D. Cal. 2016); Eclat Pharmaceuticals LLC v. West-Ward Pharmaceutical Corp., No. CV 13-6252 JAK (PLAx), 2014 WL 12607663 (C.D. Cal. 2014); In re Toyota Motor Litigation, No. SA CV 10-2151 JVS (FMOx), 2012 WL 9245988 (C.D. Cal. 2012); Bryant v. Mattel, Inc., CV 04-9049 DOC (RNBx), 2010 WL 11463910 (C.D. Cal. 2010).

7. As an initial matter, then, Defendants cannot simply file a quashal motion to challenge the Rule 45 subpoenas issued to third parties. So, do Defendants have any plausible “personal right or privilege” in the materials to be obtained through the third party subpoenas? Not based on the record presented to the Court. As confirmed at the hearing, the transactions at issue are real estate dealings (presumably at arm's length) between Defendants and the Koreatown properly buyers or sellers across the table from them. The Court has no factual basis to conclude that the records of the third parlies have any sort of private, personal, or privileged materials belonging to Defendants. See Crispin v. Christian Audiger, Inc., 717 F. Supp. 2d 965, 974 (C.D. Cal. 2010) (concluding that plaintiff established personal right to information in his social media account held at third party website).

*2 8. Defendants also contend that the Court should consider their quashal motion based on the reasoning of Moon v. SCP Pool Corp., 232 F.R.D. 633 (C.D. Cal. 2005). In Moon, the court concluded that a party may have standing to quash a third party subpoena “in unusual circumstances and for good cause.” Unusual circumstances may arise when “the subpoena is overbroad on its face and exceeds the bounds of fair discovery.” Id. at 636.

9. The Court previously expressed its concerns about the subpoenas that Plaintiffs served in this action. Formulations of document demands that seek “any document reflecting any communication” among a lengthy list of people are inherently broad and can obviously be burdensome. Yet, those burdens can be abated – typically with money, but also through negotiation and accommodation between lawyers. And, although it may be stretching relevant discovery to the bounds of Rules 16 and 26, the Court accepts that Plaintiffs' subpoenas generally seek information (disparate impact, overt patterns of discrimination, etc.) that relate to the claims in the complaint. Indep. Living Center of Southern California v. City of Los Angeles, 296 F.R.D. 632, 636 (C.D. Cal. 2013) (allowing discovery on “plaintiffs' allegations that the government defendants have engaged in a ‘pattern or practice’ of discrimination”; “courts routinely order discovery of information and documents relating to all properties” owned or managed by defendants).

10. In the end, even though portions of Plaintiffs' subpoenas may be overbroad, objectionable, or potentially unduly burdensome on the recipients, they are not so facially problematic to rise to the level of “unusual circumstances.” Moon, 232 F.R.D. at 636. Defendants cannot establish standing to quash the Rule 45 subpoenas on behalf of the absent third parties.

11. The Court separately instructed the parties to meet regarding other objections that the third parties conveyed informally to Defendants (rather than to Plaintiffs). The Court may choose to consider objections from those third parties based on a showing of reasonable cause.

12. The Court declines to award costs to either side. Rule 37(a)(5)(B) requires the Court to consider an award of reasonable fees expended in defending an unsuccessful discovery motion. However, a court must not order such payment if the motion was “substantially justified” or if “other circumstances make an award of expenses unjust.” Id. The Court concludes that the number of broadly-written subpoenas that Plaintiffs issued here (and the failure of the parties to reach a fair agreement regarding their scope) present such circumstances. Defendants will not be liable for a fee shift.

At least two of the subpoenaed parties informally resolved objections to the subpoenas directly with Plaintiffs.