New Digital Ad Tech MDL Plaintiff Not Entitled to Discovery: Google

Google opposes giving plaintiff Inform access to Google’s discovery materials in the massive digital ad tech antitrust multidistrict litigation, Google counsel Justina Sessions of Wilson Sonsini wrote U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel for Southern New York in a letter Monday (docket 1:21-md-03010). Inform filed an amended complaint “that had little to do with ad tech and delayed moving to join this MDL, yet now demands immediate access to Google’s MDL document productions that are largely irrelevant to Inform,” said Sessions. Inform “strategically chose to wait” more than three years before trying to join the MDL, she said. During that time, it filed two complaints in Georgia, “the latest of which is subject to a still-pending motion to dismiss from Google,” she said. Now Inform wants to file a third complaint, she said. Its request to amend “yet again,” which Google opposes, “is an admission that Inform’s existing, operative complaint is deficient and has little to do with ad tech,” said Sessions. “Under these circumstances,” Inform shouldn’t be given access “to millions of Google documents merely because it has become part of this MDL,” she said. Google asks discovery of and by Inform should occur, if at all, after Inform’s request to amend and Google’s motion to dismiss are resolved, she said. “It would be inefficient and unnecessary at this juncture to provide Inform with any discovery from Google,” she said. Inform would be entitled to the discovery it now seeks only if “it completely rewrote its complaint to add entirely new ad tech claims mirroring those already at issue in this MDL,” and if its new complaint survived a motion to dismiss, said Sessions. “This is unlikely.”