The opinion
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8 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
9 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
10 San Francisco Division
11 TODD CROWDER, et al., Case No. 22-cv-00237-HSG(LB)
12 Plaintiffs,
DISCOVERY ORDER
13 v.
Re: ECF No. 210
14 LINKEDIN CORPORATION,
15 Defendant.
16
17 INTRODUCTION
18 In this putative class action, the plaintiffs — subscribers to LinkedIn’s premium services —
19 claim monopolization and attempted monopolization in an alleged social-networking market by
20 (1) offering potential rivals access to LinkedIn’s private user data through application-
21 programming interfaces (API) unavailable to others, on the condition that the rivals do not
22 compete with LinkedIn, and (2) integrating LinkedIn’s user data with parent company Microsoft’s
23 Azure cloud product, thereby “tying up and driving up prices for scarce hardware resources.”1
24 The parties have a discovery dispute about depositions. The plaintiffs seek leave under Federal
25 Rule of Civil Procedure 30(a)(2)(A)(i) to take up to twenty-seven fact depositions of party
26
27 1 Order Den. Prelim. Approval – ECF No. 135 at 1–2 (summarizing complaint); Disc. Letter Br. – ECF
1 witnesses, without prejudice to seeking more. LinkedIn asks the court to (1) hold the plaintiffs to
2 the presumptive ten depositions, (2) require them to serve their Rule 30(b)(6) notice now, and (3)
3 require them to coordinate with LinkedIn on overlapping Rule 30(b)(1) and 30(b)(6) witnesses.2
4 The court can decide the dispute without oral argument. Civil L.R. 7-1(b).
5 The court grants the plaintiffs’ motion in part: the plaintiffs may take up to fifteen depositions
6 of party witnesses, a number that includes one Rule 30(b)(6) deposition of LinkedIn, without
7 prejudice to a renewed, witness-specific showing of need for additional depositions. Within
8 fourteen days of this order, the plaintiffs must serve their Rule 30(b)(6) notice, and the parties
9 must then meet and confer to coordinate overlapping Rule 30(b)(1) and Rule 30(b)(6) witnesses to
10 ensure each witness is deposed only once, in both capacities. To the extent the parties have
11 separate disputes related to particular deponents, including apex witnesses, they are directed to
12 follow the discovery procedures provided in this court’s standing order.3
13
14 STATEMENT
15 The operative complaint challenges two categories of alleged anticompetitive conduct: (1)
16 LinkedIn’s conditioning access to its private APIs on certain partners’ agreement not to compete
17 with it, and (2) LinkedIn’s migration of its cloud-computing operations to Microsoft Azure.4
18 Document discovery to date has been extensive: LinkedIn has nineteen designated custodians,
19 including former CEO Ryan Roslansky and current CEO Daniel Shapero, and it has produced
20 thousands of custodial documents.5
21 The plaintiffs seek to depose twenty-seven party witnesses. Five are current or former senior
22 executives (Mr. Roslansky, Mr. Shapero, former CEO Jeff Weiner, co-founder Reid Hoffman, and
23 former Chief Product Officer Tomer Cohen), and the remaining twenty-two are current or former
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2 Disc. Letter Br. – ECF No. 210 at 1.
26 3 Standing Order (attached).
27
4 Order Den. Prelim. Approval – ECF No. 135 at 1–2; Disc. Letter Br. – ECF No. 210 at 3.
5
1 LinkedIn employees grouped by subject: four on market definition and competition, three on
2 monopoly power and the alleged Data, Machine Learning, and Inference Barrier to Entry
3 (DMIBE), ten on the private-API program (including two in-house lawyers who helped negotiate
4 API agreements), and five on Premium pricing.6 For each proposed deponent, the plaintiffs cite
5 produced documents that, they contend, show the witness’s personal involvement in the
6 challenged conduct (which spans ten years) or unique knowledge of market definition, monopoly
7 power, or pricing, all topics central to the plaintiffs’ claims.7
8 LinkedIn responds that the plaintiffs’ showing of particularized need largely rests on the
9 witnesses being designated custodians or appearing in the document production. It contends that
10 the plaintiffs misread many of the documents they cite and provides an appendix that, it asserts,
11 provides the fuller context for those produced materials. LinkedIn contends that several of the
12 plaintiffs’ proposed deponents (including an in-house lawyer and the engineer who leads
13 LinkedIn’s AI-inference platform) have nothing to do with the challenged conduct, and that other
14 witnesses are at least facially duplicative because they work on the same issues and teams.8
15 LinkedIn also seeks an order requiring the plaintiffs to serve their Rule 30(b)(6) notice now and to
16 work with LinkedIn to address overlapping Rule 30(b)(1) and Rule 30(b)(6) witnesses.9
17 Fact discovery closes on September 18, 2026.10 The plaintiffs have noticed Rule 30(b)(1)
18 depositions of LinkedIn witnesses, but the parties do not represent that depositions have begun.11
19 The parties met and conferred in writing throughout June 2026 and by video on June 18, 2026;
20 they are at an impasse.12
21
22
6 Disc. Letter Br. – ECF No. 210 at 1–3. The plaintiffs describe the Premium-pricing group as “six
23 individuals” but list five. Id. at 3.
24
7 Id. at 1–3.
8 Id. at 3–5; App. A – ECF No. 209-3.
25
9 Disc. Letter Br. – ECF No. 210 at 5.
26 10 Scheduling Order – ECF No. 143.
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11 See Disc. Letter Br. – ECF No. 210 at 4 n.1 (stating that the plaintiffs have noticed depositions of
several current and former C-suite executives).
1 LEGAL STANDARD
2 Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s
3 claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the
4 issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant
5 information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and
6 whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit. Information
7 within this scope of discovery need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable. Fed. R. Civ.
8 P. 26(b). “Pretrial discovery is ordinarily accorded a broad and liberal treatment.” Peng v. Nw.
9 Mut. Life Ins. Co., No. 17-cv-01760-SI, 2017 WL 3007030, at *1 (N.D. Cal. July 14, 2017)
10 (cleaned up) (quoting Shoen v. Shoen, 5 F.3d 1289, 1292 (9th Cir. 1993)). “The test for relevance
11 is not overly exacting: evidence is relevant if it has ‘any tendency to make . . . more or less
12 probable . . . [a] fact [that] is of consequence in determining the action.’” In re Volkswagen
13 “Clean Diesel” Mktg., Sales Pracs., & Prods. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 2672 CRB (JSC), 2018 WL
14 340640, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 9, 2018) (quoting Fed. R. Evid. 401).
15 The party moving to compel discovery “has the initial burden of establishing that the
16 information sought is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the
17 case.” Impinj, Inc. v. NXP USA, Inc., No. 19-cv-03161-YGR (AGT), 2022 WL 16586886, at *2
18 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 1, 2022) (cleaned up). The party resisting discovery has the burden of showing
19 that the discovery should not be allowed and of supporting its objections with competent evidence.
20 Lofton v. Verizon Wireless (VAW) LLC, 308 F.R.D. 276, 281 (N.D. Cal. 2015). Under Rule 26(b),
21 the court must limit discovery that is “unreasonably cumulative or duplicative,” obtainable from a
22 less burdensome source, or where the burden “outweighs its likely benefit.” Fed. R. Civ. P.
23 26(b)(1), (b)(2)(C).
24 Rule 30(a)(2) limits the number of depositions that each side may take (without leave or
25 stipulation) to ten. “A party seeking to exceed the presumptive number of depositions must make a
26 particularized showing of the need for the additional discovery.” Authentec, Inc. v. Atrua Techs.,
27 Inc., No. C 08-1423 PJH, 2008 WL 5120767, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 4, 2008). “To that end, courts
1 exhausted the ten depositions permitted as of right under Rule 30(a)(2).” Id. “When evaluating a
2 party’s request to expand discovery limitations, the court must ensure that the discovery sought is
3 ‘relevant to [the] party’s claim[s] or defense[s]’ and not unreasonably cumulative, duplicative, or
4 burdensome.” Newport v. Burger King Corp., No. C-10-04511-WHA (DMR), 2011 WL 3607973,
5 at *1 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 16, 2011) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)).
6
7 ANALYSIS
8 1. The Plaintiffs’ Request for Twenty-Seven Depositions
9 Ten depositions are too few for this case. The plaintiffs’ claims are “narrow” in the sense that
10 they target two categories of conduct, but that conduct spans more than a decade, hundreds of API
11 agreements, a major cloud migration, and pricing across multiple Premium product lines.13 The
12 document production to date reflects this scope, with thousands of custodial files produced.14 And
13 this court’s previous orders have acknowledged the breadth of the underlying conduct by ordering
14 additional custodians and search terms.15 While sometimes courts require a party to exhaust the
15 depositions it is permitted before seeking more, courts depart from this when there are multiple
16 parties and the case’s complexity warrants more depositions. See Del Campo v. Am. Corrective
17 Counseling Servs., Inc., No. C-01-21151 JW (PVT), 2007 WL 3306496, at *5–6 (N.D. Cal. Nov.
18 6, 2007). That is the case in this putative class action; it would be disproportional to hold the
19 plaintiffs to the presumptive ten depositions under Rule 30(a)(2)(A).
20 But twenty-seven depositions is too many, at least on this record. Much of the plaintiffs’
21 showing hinges on the requested witnesses being designated custodians or appearing on produced
22 documents.16 This falls short of the plaintiffs’ burden of making a particularized showing of need:
23 custodial status and document counts do not, by themselves, establish that a witness will offer
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13 Id. at 1, 3.
26 14 Disc. Letter Br. – ECF No. 176 at 1, 5 n.3 (representing that as of June 8, 2026, LinkedIn has
produced thousands of custodial documents).
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15 Order – ECF No. 170 at 2, 5–6; Order – ECF No. 202 at 2, 10–11.
1 relevant and non-cumulative deposition testimony. See Newport, 2011 WL 3607973, at *1. The
2 plaintiffs’ argument — that “a bare minimum of 19 depositions” is needed to cover LinkedIn’s
3 nineteen custodians — is similarly misguided. It assumes that every custodian must be deposed,
4 without any showing of how deposing each custodian amounts to relevant, non-duplicative, and
5 proportional discovery. Custodians are chosen because their files are likely to contain responsive
6 documents, which is a reason to collect their files, not necessarily a reason to depose them. See In
7 re Actos Antitrust Litig., 639 F. Supp. 3d 453, 455 (S.D.N.Y. 2022) (permitting fifteen depositions
8 in a case with twenty-five custodians).
9 The plaintiffs’ request also suffers from a duplication problem, which is illustrated by their
10 grouping of witnesses by category: four witnesses for competition issues, three for the DMIBE
11 and Azure, five for pricing, and ten for LinkedIn’s API program.17 The plaintiffs have not
12 explained why they require more than one or two witnesses per category, and they ignore the
13 possibility that a Rule 30(b)(6) designee may supplement testimony on these categories.18 Cf.
14 Jones v. Sunbelt Rentals, Inc., No. 22-CV-05954-AMO-PHK, 2023 WL 10691302, at *4 (N.D.
15 Cal. Nov. 16, 2023). As the defendants point out, some of the witnesses within particular
16 categories are at least facially cumulative: the API witnesses include six members of LinkedIn’s
17 business-development team and two in-house lawyers who helped negotiate the agreements.19
18 Particularly where the plaintiffs have yet to take a single deposition, their request to depose
19 multiple individuals with overlapping knowledge, responsibilities, and teams risks duplicative and
20 disproportionate discovery. And for some of the twenty-seven witnesses, relevance is thin: the
21 plaintiffs do not explain, for example, how the engineering of LinkedIn’s AI-inference platform
22 (as opposed to the alleged use of data advantages to exclude rivals) bears on the challenged
23 conduct and justifies deposing the relevant engineer.20
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17 Id. at 2–3.
18 Id. at 5 (making this point).
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19 Id.
1 The plaintiffs point to produced documents for most identified witnesses that purportedly show
2 the relevance of the requested deponent’s testimony.21 The parties dispute what these documents
3 actually demonstrate.22 The court does not resolve those document-by-document disputes here, and
4 it draws no conclusions about the good faith of either party. It is enough that, on both sides’
5 submissions, the showing for a number of the proposed deponents rests primarily on their names
6 being on produced documents, rather than a particularized demonstration of unique knowledge.
7 A reasonable approach lies between the parties’ positions: leave to take up to fifteen
8 depositions of party witnesses, a number that includes one Rule 30(b)(6) deposition of LinkedIn
9 (which counts as one deposition regardless of the number of designees). The plaintiffs may choose
10 the deponents, subject to any protective-order rulings, which lets them prioritize the witnesses they
11 contend have unique knowledge. The leave is without prejudice: if, after substantially completing
12 the fifteen depositions, the plaintiffs can make a witness-specific showing that additional
13 depositions are necessary, non-duplicative, and proportional, they may raise the issue through the
14 court’s discovery-dispute process. This middle course is consistent with decisions managing
15 comparable cases. In re Actos, 639 F. Supp. 3d at 455.
16
17 2. The Plaintiffs’ Rule 30(b)(6) Notice and Coordination of Overlapping Witnesses
18 Rule 30(b)(6) protects an organization from “an unnecessarily large number of [its] officers
19 and agents being deposed” by allowing it to designate witnesses to testify to the corporation’s
20 knowledge. United States v. HVI Cat Canyon, Inc., No. CV 11-5097 FMO (SSX), 2016 WL
21 11683593, at *5 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 26, 2016) (cleaned up). Courts regularly require parties to
22 combine a witness’s Rule 30(b)(1) deposition with their Rule 30(b)(6) deposition during
23 discovery. In re Soc. Media Adolescent Addiction/Pers. Inj. Prods. Liab. Litig., No. 22-MD-
24 03047-YGR (PHK), 2025 WL 1009362, at *6 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 4, 2025) (collecting cases).
25 The plaintiffs say that they will take a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition but do not give a reason for
26
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21 Id. at 1–3.
] withholding their topics, stating only that their Rule 30(b)(6) notice is “forthcoming.””? Serving
2 || the notice now will let the parties identify overlaps and sequence individual and corporate
3 || testimony efficiently — part of the proportionality that Rule 26 requires. Within fourteen days of
4 || this order, the plaintiffs must serve their Rule 30(b)(6) notice. The parties must then meet and
5 confer to coordinate overlapping witnesses. Each overlapping witness is to be deposed once, in
6 || both capacities, with examination presumptively limited to one day of seven hours, Fed. R. Civ. P.
7 || 30(d)(1), absent a stipulation or further court order.
8
9 3. Disputes Regarding Individual Deponents
10 The court declines to adjudicate which of the plaintiffs’ noticed Rule 30(b)(1) depositions may
11 go forward. The parties’ discovery letter brief concerns the number of depositions the plaintiffs
12 || may take. This order resolves that dispute and goes no further. LinkedIn has represented that it
13 || will move separately for a protective order on apex grounds. The court will decide those issues, if
14 || necessary, on that motion.”* The parties are directed to follow the discovery procedures provided
15 in this court’s standing for any disputes related to particular deponents.”°
16
2 17 CONCLUSION
18 This resolves ECF No. 210.
19 IT IS SO ORDERED.
20 Dated: July 17, 2026 LAE
21
LAUREL BEELER
22 United States Magistrate Judge
23
24
25
_-2)09yc
3 Disc. Letter Br. — ECF No. 210 at 1, 5.
27 4 ig, at 4 nil,
28 °5 Standing Order (attached).