“Youth Social Media Judge Threatens Contempt Against State AGs”

Isaiah Poritz reported in Bloomberg Law that the Youth Social Media Judge Threatens Contempt Against State AGs (Nov. 22, 2024).

I described the underlying issue in Possession, Custody, or Control of Responsive Information by States Suing Meta (Sept. 12, 2024), discussing In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, 2024 WL 4125618 (N.D. Cal. 2024).

The States and State Attorneys General “object[ed] to treating their respective state agencies as being subject to party discovery and insist[ed] that all of these agencies are third parties from whom Meta should seek documents by subpoenas under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45.”  Meta responded that Rule 34 requests were proper and it should not be forced to serve over 200 subpoenas under Rule 45.  The court applied the “legal right” test for what was in the litigants’ possession, custody and control under Fed.R.Civ.P.34.  The court wrote: “In all thirty-two cases, the State itself is a party to the suit. Courts have found that discovery obligations extend to other government agencies even if they are non-parties based on the recognition that the State (or the government as a whole) is essentially the real party in interest and thus the discovery obligation extends to the entire government.”  Id. at *10.

Mr. Poritz describes a subsequent hearing, writing:

The federal judge overseeing a lawsuit by dozens of state attorneys general against Meta Platforms Inc. accusing it of addicting adolescent users threatened to hold state agencies in contempt for failing to produce documents needed for the case.

“I do not take lightly anybody’s failure to comply with federal court orders,” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said at a Friday hearing in Oakland, Calif. “Something will happen, I don’t know what. But I guarantee you I will not let this stand.”

The Bloomberg Law article continues, stating:

At the Friday hearing, Rogers said that even if the states are concerned that Meta’s document requests are overly broad, that doesn’t mean they can refuse to do anything. The appropriate response is to go to the magistrate judge and ask to narrow the scope of discovery, she said.

“Refusing to comply with a court order is not the appropriate response,” Rogers said. “They’ll have to deal with that, or I’ll throw you out of the case, or I’ll issue contempt. I have lots of options available to me and I will not hesitate to use them.”

However, according to the article:

Emily Kalanithi, a lawyer for the California AG’s office, said the decision to not produce documents isn’t out of a lack of respect for the rule of law. Instead, there are “very real sovereignty issues that are at play with the federal court order and California precedent.”

I described the general governing principle in Is a Court-Ordered ESI Protocol a Trap?, quoting Cook v. Meta Platforms, Inc., 2024 WL 4133811 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 9, 2024):

So, here is the deal with a court order, especially one that you stipulated to. It’s an order, so you have to comply with it. If you learn new information that makes it seem like it will be difficult or impossible for you to comply with the order, then you should move to modify the order with reasonable diligence, explaining why the order has become difficult or impossible for you to comply with. You might win your motion, or you might lose, depending on how good your argument is. But that’s what you’re supposed to do if you find yourself in that situation. What you’re not supposed to do is pretend like the order doesn’t exist, or pretend that your violations are somehow a form of compliance, and then hope your opponent doesn’t point out what you’re doing.

That blog cites Heath v. Vill. of Cent. City, Illinois,  2024 WL 3012370, at *3 (S.D. Ill. June 14, 2024), where the court criticized a litigant’s failure to seek relief from a court order, stating: “They did not seek an extension of the time to comply with the Discovery Order, which the Court likely would have freely given. Instead, they now seek a finding of good cause and excusable neglect under Rule 6(b). In other words, as the old adage goes, Defendants choose to seek forgiveness rather than permission. This was a miscalculation. The Court cannot ignore that Defendants’ dithering has now resulted in both a stall of discovery and disobedience, at some level that may still need to be determined, of the Court’s Discovery Order.” [emphasis added].

In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation presents important substantive and discovery issues.  It will be interesting to see how they are resolved.