Summary
The court granted Plaintiff Mashid Wadeea’s motion to amend the stipulated protective order in a putative class action concerning alleged wheel and tire defects in Mercedes-Benz S-Class vehicles. The court held that Defendant had not shown good cause for a provision allowing unilateral redaction of information deemed objectively irrelevant and ordered the parties to produce unredacted versions of documents previously redacted for relevancy.
Court
United States District Court for the Southern District of California
Jurisdiction
United States District Court for the Southern District of California
Decision date
January 13, 2026
Docket number
24-cv-1587-JLS-DDL
Disposition
other
Questions Presented
- In a stipulated protective order lacking a prior judicial good-cause finding, which party bears the burden of establishing good cause for maintaining a provision authorizing relevance-based redactions?
- Whether Defendant established good cause to retain the protective-order provision permitting unilateral redaction of information deemed objectively irrelevant to the action.
- Whether the challenged redacted information could be relevant or discoverable even if it might ultimately be inadmissible at trial.
Holdings
- When a protective order was stipulated and no party or court made a prior good-cause showing, the party seeking continued protection bears the burden of establishing good cause for the challenged protection.
- Defendant failed to establish good cause for retaining the protective-order provision authorizing unilateral redaction of information deemed objectively irrelevant, and the provision should be removed.
- Information is discoverable when it has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable and is of consequence to the action; it need not be admissible at trial.
Court Document
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