Todd Crowder, et al. v. LinkedIn Corporation

District Court, N.D. California·Decided April 6, 2026·No. 4:22-cv-00237·Unknown

Opinion

San Francisco Division TODD CROWDER, et al., Case No. 22-cv-00237-HSG (LB)

Plaintiffs, DISCOVERY ORDER v. Re: ECF Nos. 162, 164, 167 Defendant. The parties have discovery disputes in this putative class action, where the plaintiffs claim monopolization and attempted monopolization from practices that allegedly allow LinkedIn to overcharge Premium subscribers, in violation of § 2 of the Sherman Act. The two categories of alleged anticompetitive conduct are (1) offering potential rivals access to LinkedIn’s private user data through application-programming interfaces (API) unavailable to others, on the condition that the rivals don’t compete with LinkedIn, and (2) integrating LinkedIn’s user data with parent company Microsoft’s Azure cloud product, thereby “tying up and driving up prices for scarce hardware resources.”1

1 Order – ECF No. 148 at 1; Disc. Letter Brs. – ECF Nos. 162, 164, 167. Citations refer to the Three discovery letter briefs are before the court. The first (ECF No. 162) concerns the custodians for LinkedIn’s production in response to the plaintiffs’ requests for production. The second (ECF No. 164) concerns the scope of production for LinkedIn’s RFPs requesting that the plaintiffs search their personal social-media accounts and produce professional-networking communications and contact lists. The third (ECF No. 167) concerns the sufficiency of LinkedIn’s document production of sales, pricing, and financial data.2 For ECF No. 162, LinkedIn must produce documents from the following disputed custodians in addition to the sixteen custodians LinkedIn has already identified: Ryan Roslansky, Daniel Shapero, and Erran Berger. For now, the plaintiffs’ request to add additional custodians — Joseph Baribeau, Ines Gonzalez, Allison Guillen-Capo, Hahn Vo, Blake Lawit, Vivek Hariharan, and Dhwani Shah — is denied without prejudice (except the conceded discovery for Guillen-Capo). For RFP Nos. 13– 16, LinkedIn must produce documents sufficient to show the scope and status of the Azure migration. The parties must meet and confer regarding RFP Nos. 25–26 after LinkedIn serves its responses and objections. For ECF No. 164, the court grants LinkedIn’s request in part. The plaintiffs must conduct a limited, targeted search of a subset of their social-media accounts, as described below. The court denies LinkedIn’s request in RFP No. 13 for production of the plaintiffs’ complete connections and follower lists. For ECF No. 167, LinkedIn has already agreed to produce what exists back to the date that the plaintiffs seek, January 1, 2014. This is sufficient. Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit. Information within this scope of discovery need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b). “Pretrial discovery is ordinarily accorded a broad and liberal treatment.” Peng v. Nw. Mut. Life Ins. Co., No. 17-cv-01760-SI, 2017 WL 3007030, at *1 (N.D. Cal. July 14, 2017) (cleaned up) (quoting Shoen v. Shoen, 5 F.3d 1289, 1292 (9th Cir. 1993)). Moreover, “[t]he test for relevance is not overly exacting: evidence is relevant if it has ‘any tendency to make . . . more or less probable . . . [a] fact [that] is of consequence in determining the action.’” In re Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” Mktg., Sales Pracs., & Prods. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 2672 CRB (JSC), 2018 WL 340640, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 9, 2018) (quoting Fed. R. Evid. 401). The party moving to compel discovery “has the initial burden of establishing that the information sought is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case.” Impinj, Inc. v. NXP USA, Inc., No. 19-cv-03161-YGR (AGT), 2022 WL 16586886, at *2 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 1, 2022) (cleaned up). The party resisting discovery bears the burden of showing that the discovery should not be allowed and of supporting its objections with competent evidence. Lofton v. Verizon Wireless (VAW) LLC, 308 F.R.D. 276, 281 (N.D. Cal. 2015). Under Rule 26(b), the court must limit discovery that is “unreasonably cumulative or duplicative,” obtainable from a less burdensome source, or where the burden “outweighs its likely benefit.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1), (b)(2)(C). The responding party generally is “in a better position” to identify those employees “most likely to possess responsive ESI.” Emerson v. Iron Mountain Info. Mgmt. Servs., Inc., No. 20-cv- 08607-YGR (AGT), 2021 WL 8085488, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Sep. 2, 2021). That said, a requesting party may obtain additional custodians upon a showing that the disputed custodians “possess uniquely relevant information that is not available from the sources already designated.” In re Facebook, Inc. Consumer Priv. User Profile Litig., No. 3:18-MD-02843-VC-JSC, 2021 WL 10282213, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 14, 2021). 1. Custodians for LinkedIn’s Document Production (ECF No. 162) The RFPs at issue are at ECF No. 163-1. The plaintiffs group them into four categories: (1) Market definition (or relevant market). Information related to (1a) LinkedIn’s actual or potential competition in the Professional Social Networking (PSN) Market and (1b) LinkedIn’s PSN product and how it is offered and sold. (RFP Nos. 1, 5, 10, 18, 24–26.) (2) Monopoly power. Information related to LinkedIn’s market share, the barriers to entry surrounding the PSN Market, (2a) the Data, Machine Learning, and Inference Barrier to Entry (DMIBE), and (2b) the impacts of LinkedIn’s conduct on its competitive position (anticompetitive impact). (RFP Nos. 6(b), 8, 13, 24–27.) (3) Anticompetitive conduct. Information related to (3a) LinkedIn’s specific intent to monopolize the PSN Market (including LinkedIn’s AI/machine learning and infrastructure strategy and efforts to strengthen the DMBIE), (3b) LinkedIn’s private API program and its creation and/or maintenance of monopoly power in the PSN Market (including whether LinkedIn intended to exclude rivals and forestall/decrease competition through the program), and (3c) LinkedIn’s agreement with Microsoft related to Azure integration (including whether below-cost pricing for Azure compete impacted PSN competition and thereby contributed to LinkedIn’s monopolization/attempted monopolization. alleged anticompetitive conduct. (RFP Nos. 1–4, 6(a), 7–8, 12–17, 19, 25–27.) (4) Remedy/ damages. The RFPs concern the overcharge injury to LinkedIn Premium subscribers from the monopolization/attempted monopolization and seek (4a) financial details of LinkedIn’s business and (4b) information related to LinkedIn Premium Pricing. (RFP Nos. 9–11, 22–23.)3 LinkedIn has agreed to produce documents from sixteen custodians.4 The plaintiffs seek to add ten more: Joseph Baribeau, Erran Berger, Ines Gonzalez, Allison Guillen-Capo, Vivek Hariharan, Blake Lawit, Ryan Roslansky, Dhwani Shah, Daniel Shapero, and Hahn Vo.5 LinkedIn must produce documents from the following disputed custodians: Ryan Roslansky, Daniel Shapero, and Erran Berger. For now, the plaintiffs’ request to add additional custodians — Joseph Baribeau, Ines Gonzalez, Allison Guillen-Capo, Hahn Vo, Blake Lawit, Vivek Hariharan, and Dhwani Shah — is denied without prejudice (except the conce

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