ASEM ELDAGHAR, Plaintiff, -against- THE CITY OF NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF CITYWIDE ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES, Defendant. 02 Civ. 9151 (KMW)(HBP) UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK February 27, 2004, Decided March 5, 2004, Filed JUDGES: HENRY PITMAN, United States Magistrate Judge. OPINIONBY: HENRY PITMAN OPINION: MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER PITMAN, United States Magistrate Judge: This is an employment discrimination action in which plaintiff alleges that he was terminated from employment with the defendant on the basis of age and national-origin discrimination. On December 8, 2003 I held a discovery conference during which I resolved most of the parties' discovery disputes. Several of the disputes required additional briefing, and the parties have submitted letter briefs addressing these issues. I write to resolve these outstanding issues. 1. Redaction of Purportedly Personal Information for Employment Records Information for Employment Records Defendant first seeks a protective order permitting it to redact social security numbers, addresses and telephone numbers from the employment records of current and former employees of defendant. Defendant claims that the redaction is appropriate in order to protect the privacy interests [*2] of the non-party employees and to prevent plaintiff from contacting them directly. Plaintiff does not object to redacting the social security numbers, and social security numbers may, therefore, be redacted. Plaintiff does object to the redaction of contact information. It is well settled that the party seeking a protective order bears the burden of demonstrating that such an order is justified. Dove v. Atlantic Capital Corp., 963 F.2d 15, 19 (2d Cir. 1992), citing Penthouse Int'l. Ltd. v. Playboy Enters., Inc., 663 F.2d 371, 391 (2d Cir. 1981); Monarch Knitting Mach. Corp. v. Sulzer Morat GmbH, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9278, 85 Civ. 3412 (LBS), 1998 WL 338106, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. June 25, 1998); Concord Boat Corp. v. Brunswick Corp., 169 F.R.D. 44, 48-49 (S.D.N.Y. 1996). Thus, to the extent defendant argues that plaintiff must show a need for the contact information, it has misallocated the burden. Plaintiff need not show good cause for relevant discovery. Rather, it is defendant's burden to show good cause to limit discovery. To the extent that defendant asserts the need to protect the privacy of the non-party employees, its argument ignores the [*3] fact that we now live in an age where the Internet has made a wealth of identifying information available. Through publicly available databases, it is now possible for a person with only modest knowledge of the Internet to find out an individual's address, telephone number, his/her spouse's name and date of birth, the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the individual's neighbors and the number of years they have lived at their current addresses. I have no doubt that an individual with greater knowledge of the Internet could access even more detailed information. Given the fact that the information in issue could almost certainly be found on the Internet, there is not a pro-tectable privacy interest in addresses and telephone numbers. To the extent that defendant seeks to redact the information in order to prevent plaintiff from contacting current and former employees, its application also lacks any legal basis. Although professional ethical restrictions that may prevent an attorney from contacting a current or former employee of a represented, adverse party, see generally Miano v. AC & R Adver., Inc., 148 F.R.D. 68, 74-75 (S.D.N.Y. 1993); Polycast Tech. Corp. v. Uniroyal, Inc., 129 F.R.D. 621, 623-28 (S.D.N.Y. 1990), [*4] the pro se plaintiff here is not an attorney and is not, therefore, subject to these professional ethical restrictions. To the extent plaintiff seeks to prevent plaintiff from contacting current or former employees directly, there simply is no general prohibition against a party preparing its case by contacting and interviewing witnesses informally. n1 Although no litigant, whether pro se or represented, has the right to harass a potential witness or to make a nuisance of himself, there is no evidence currently before me that would support a finding that plaintiff intends to or is likely to engage in such misconduct. ... _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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