Phillips v. General Motors Corp.

In 1998, Alvin Phillips (plaintiff), on behalf of the estates of Darrell, Angela, and Timothy Byrd, sued General Motors Corporation (GM) (defendant) in federal district court after Darrell, Angela, and Timothy were killed in an accident involving an allegedly defective GM C/K pickup truck. Before discovery began, the parties agreed to a “share” protective order that covered information including GM sales and profit forecasts, executive-committee documents, and defect-examination procedures. The protective order allowed the parties to share information with other litigants in similar cases but not with the general public. After a GM expert testified in a deposition about amounts that GM had paid in other settlements involving defective C/K trucks, Phillips filed a motion to compel GM to produce that settlement information. The magistrate judge ordered GM to provide the total number and aggregate dollar amounts of the previous C/K settlements and said that the information would be subject to the share protective order. GM produced the settlement materials under seal. The parties eventually settled, and the court dismissed the action. After dismissal, the Los Angeles Times moved to intervene in the action and asked the district court to unseal the GM settlement materials. The Times claimed, among other things, that the information did not warrant a protective order. The district court ordered the release of the materials, stating that the protective order was inappropriate because the materials were not trade secrets or other confidential research, development, or commercial information as specified in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c)’s categories of protectable information. GM appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.