JOHN A. MENDEZ, District Judge.
COME NOW Plaintiffs, Nutrishare, Inc. ("Nutrishare") and Patient One, Patient Two, and Patient Three (the "Patients") (Nutrishare and the Patients together, "Plaintiffs") and Defendants Connecticut General Life Insurance Company and CIGNA Health and Life Insurance Company (together, "CIGNA") (Nutrishare and CIGNA collectively referred to as "Parties"), who hereby stipulate as to the entry of the following Protective Order governing the disclosure of confidential information in this matter:
The Court and Parties recognize that at least some of the documents and information being sought through discovery in the above-captioned action are normally kept confidential by Parties. Disclosure and discovery activity in this action are likely to involve production of confidential or private information, including without limitation protected health information, for which special protection from public disclosure and from use for any purpose other than prosecuting this litigation would be warranted. The purpose of this Order is to protect the confidentiality of such materials as much as practical during the litigation, including without limitation as required by law. Accordingly, Parties hereby stipulate to and petition the Court to enter the following Stipulated Protective Order. Parties acknowledge that this Order does not confer blanket protections on all disclosures or responses to discovery and that the protection it affords extends only to the limited information or items that are entitled under the applicable legal principles to treatment as confidential.
Parties further acknowledge, as set forth in Section 10 below, that in accordance with Local Rule 141 and subject to public policy and further court order, nothing shall be filed under seal, and the Court shall not be required to take any action, without separate prior order by the Judge before whom the hearing or proceeding will take place, after application by the affected party with appropriate notice to opposing counsel.
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The protections conferred by this Stipulation and Order cover not only Protected Material (as defined above), but also any information copied or extracted therefrom, as well as all copies, excerpts, summaries, or compilations thereof, plus testimony, conversations, or presentations by Parties or counsel to or in court or in other settings that might reveal Protected Material.
Even after the termination of this litigation, the confidentiality obligations imposed by this Order shall remain in effect until a Designating Party agrees otherwise in writing or a court order otherwise directs.
5.1
Mass, indiscriminate, or routinized designations are prohibited. Designations that are shown to be clearly unjustified, or that have been made for an improper purpose (e.g., to unnecessarily encumber or retard the case development process, or to impose unnecessary expenses and burdens on other Parties), expose the Designating Party to sanctions. If it comes to a Party's or a non-party's attention that information or items that it designated for protection do not qualify for protection at all, or do not qualify for the level of protection initially asserted, that Party or non-party must promptly notify all other Parties that it is withdrawing the mistaken designation.
5.2
Designation in conformity with this Order requires:
(a)
on each page that contains protected material.
A Party or non-party that makes original documents or materials available for inspection need not designate them for protection until after the inspecting Party has indicated which material it would like copied and produced. During the inspection and before the designation, all of the material made available for inspection shall be deemed "Confidential." After the inspecting Party has identified the documents it wants copied and produced, the Producing Party must determine which documents, or portions thereof, qualify for protection under this Order, then, before producing the specified documents, the Producing Party must affix the appropriate legend ("CONFIDENTIAL") on each page that contains Protected Material.
(b) No person shall attend portions of depositions pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 30 or 45 at which Protected Material is disclosed unless such person is an authorized recipient under the terms of this Order. If, during the course of a deposition, the response to a question would require the disclosure of Protected Material, the witness may refuse to answer or the Party whose Protected Material would be disclosed may instruct the witness not to answer or not to complete the answer, as the case may be, until any persons not authorized to receive such information have left the room. For testimony given in deposition or in other pretrial or trial proceedings, that the Party or non-party offering or sponsoring the testimony identify on the record, before the close of the deposition, hearing, or other proceeding, all protected testimony, and further specify any portions of the testimony that qualify as "Confidential." This provision does not apply to Court proceedings. When it is impractical to identify separately each portion of testimony that is entitled to protection, and when it appears that substantial portions of the testimony may qualify for protection, the Party or non-party that sponsors, offers, or gives the testimony may invoke on the record (before the deposition or proceeding is concluded) a right to have up to thirty (30) days after completion of the transcript of the deposition (as certified by a court reporter) to identify the lines and pages of the testimony as to which protection is sought, Only those portions of the testimony that are appropriately designated for protection within the thirty (30) days shall be covered by the provisions of this Stipulated Protective Order.
Transcript pages containing Protected Material must be separately bound by the court reporter, who must affix to the top of each such page the legend "CONFIDENTIAL" as instructed by the Party or nonparty offering or sponsoring the witness or presenting the testimony.
(c) for information produced in some form other than documentary, and for any other tangible items, that the Producing Party affix in a prominent place on the exterior of the container or containers in which the information or item is stored the legend "CONFIDENTIAL." If only portions of the information or item warrant protection, the Producing Party, to the extent practicable, shall identify the protected portions.
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If Parties cannot resolve a challenge without court intervention, the Designating Party shall file and serve a motion to retain confidentiality within 21 days of the initial notice of challenge or within 14 days of Parties agreeing that the meet and confer process will not resolve their dispute, whichever is later.
7.1
Protected Material must be stored and maintained by a Receiving Party at a location and in a secure manner that ensures that access is limited to the persons authorized under this Order.
7.2
(a) the Receiving Party's Outside Counsel of record in this action, as well as employees of said Counsel to whom it is reasonably necessary to disclose the information for this litigation;
(b) House Counsel of the Receiving Party, as well as employees or agents of House Counsel, (1) to whom disclosure is reasonably necessary for this litigation;
(c) the officers, directors, and employees of the Receiving Party to whom disclosure is reasonably necessary for this litigation;
(d) experts (as defined in this Order) of the Receiving Party to whom disclosure is reasonably necessary for this litigation;
(e) the Court and its personnel;
(f) court reporters, their staffs, and professional vendors to whom disclosure is reasonably necessary for this litigation;
(g) during their depositions, witnesses in the action to whom disclosure is reasonably necessary. Pages of transcribed deposition testimony or exhibits to depositions that reveal Protected Material must be separately bound by the court reporter and may not be disclosed to anyone except as permitted under this Stipulated Protective Order;
(h) the author of the document or the original source of the information;
(i) witnesses interviewed by a party's representatives or counsel, where such disclosure is reasonably necessary for the purpose of factual investigation, discovery or trial preparation.
If a Receiving Party is served with a subpoena or an order issued in other litigation that could compel disclosure of any information or items designated in this action as "CONFIDENTIAL" the Receiving Party must so notify the Designating Party, in writing (by electronic mail or facsimile, if possible) immediately and in no event more than three (3) court days after receiving the subpoena or order. Such notification must include a copy of the subpoena or court order. The Receiving Party also must immediately inform in writing the Party who caused the subpoena or order to issue in the other litigation that some or all the material covered by the subpoena or order is the subject of this Protective Order. In addition, the Receiving Party must deliver a copy of this Stipulated Protective Order promptly to the Party in the other action that caused the subpoena or order to issue. The purpose of imposing these duties is to alert the interested Parties to the existence of this Protective Order and to afford the Designating Party in this case an opportunity to try to protect its confidentiality interests in the court from which the subpoena or order issued. The Designating Party shall bear the burdens and the expenses of seeking protection in that court of its confidential material — and nothing in these provisions should be construed as authorizing or encouraging a Receiving Party in this action to disobey a lawful directive from another court.
If a party, through inadvertence, produces any Confidential Information without labeling or marking or otherwise designating it as such in accordance with this Order, the designating party may give written notice to the receiving party that the document or thing produced is deemed Confidential Information, and that the document or thing produced should be treated as such in accordance with that designation under this Order. The receiving party must treat the materials as confidential, once the designating party so notifies the receiving party. Counsel for Parties shall agree on a mutually acceptable manner of labeling or marking the inadvertently produced materials "CONFIDENTIAL." The Receiving Party must immediately (a) notify in writing the Designating Party of the unauthorized disclosures, (b) use its best efforts to retrieve all copies of the Protected Material, (c) inform the person or persons to whom unauthorized disclosures were made of all the terms of this Order.
Subject to public policy, and further court order, nothing shall be filed under seal, and the Court shall not be required to take any action, without separate prior order by the Judge before whom the hearing or proceeding will take place, after application by the affected party with appropriate notice to opposing counsel.
Unless otherwise ordered or agreed in writing by the Producing Party, within thirty (30) days of the conclusion of the trial and of any appeals, each Receiving Party must return all Protected Material to the Producing Party. As used in this subdivision, "all Protected Material" includes all copies, abstracts, compilations, summaries or any other form of reproducing or capturing any of the Protected Material. With permission in writing from the Designating Party, the Receiving Party may destroy some or all of the Protected Material instead of returning it. Any documents, papers, disks, diskettes, thumb drives or other tangible things that include or contain information derived from confidential information shall be destroyed, except that privileged documents and information in court transcripts derived from Protected Material need not be destroyed. Whether the Protected Material is returned or destroyed, the Receiving Party must submit a written certification to the Producing Party (and, if not the same person or entity, to the Designating Party) by the thirty (30) day deadline that identifies (by category, where appropriate) all the Protected Material that was returned or destroyed and that affirms that the Receiving Party has not retained any copies, abstracts, compilations, summaries or other forms of reproducing or capturing any of the Protected Material.
Notwithstanding this provision, Counsel are entitled to retain an archival copy of all pleadings, motion papers, transcripts, legal memoranda, correspondence or attorney work product, even if such materials contain Protected Material. Any such archival copies that contain or constitute Protected Material remain subject to this Protective Order as set forth in Section 4 (DURATION), above.
12.1 Nothing herein shall prohibit a party, or its counsel of record, from disclosing a document containing confidential information to the person the document identifies as an author or recipient of such document, or to any person (including third party witnesses) for which prior written approval for disclosure has been granted by the Producing Party. A Party's use for any purpose of its own documents, which that Party produces in this action, shall not be considered a violation of this Order.
12.2 Notwithstanding any other provision of this Order to the contrary, the confidentiality obligations of this Order shall not apply, or shall cease to apply, to any information that:
(a) at the time of disclosure hereunder, was already lawfully in possession of the Receiving Party and was not acquired through discovery or under any obligation of confidentiality; or
(b) after disclosure hereunder, was lawfully acquired by the Receiving Party from a third party lawfully possessing the same and having no obligation to maintain the confidentiality of the information.
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(a) to apply to the Court for a protective order relating to any confidential information for use at trial or relating to any discovery in this litigation;
(b) to object to the production of documents it considers not subject to discovery; or
(c) to apply to the Court for an order compelling production of documents
13.4 In the event anyone shall violate or thereafter violate any terms of this Order, the aggrieved Party may seek any remedy permitted by law, including but not limited to sanctions for contempt, damages for injunctive relief, and it shall not be a defense to request for injunctive relief that the aggrieved Party possesses an adequate remedy at law.
13.5 All persons subject to the terms of this Order agree that this Court shall retain jurisdiction over them for the purpose of enforcing this Order.
PURSUANT TO STIPULATION, IT IS SO ORDERED.