“[S]ometimes the Court’s job is to declare that perfection isn’t worth it.”

[EDRM Editor’s Note: The opinions and positions are those of Michael Berman.]

Efforts to redact material as irrelevant are generally rejected. Relevance Redactions Prohibited – Again (May 17, 2024); ESI Protocol Should Define “Documents” and Address Redaction Based on Irrelevancy (May 14, 2025).

The court in Hughes v. Apple, Inc., 2025 WL 3141836 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 10, 2025), permitted plaintiffs’ “restrained” redactions in connection with a dispute over their medical records.  Essentially, plaintiffs sued for alleged emotional distress and redacted information in medical records that was not related to those claims, i.e., irrelevant.  Of course, there were additional privacy issues concerning medical records.

“This is a large and complicated action.”  Hughes v. Apple, Inc., 2024 WL 1140998, at *3 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 15, 2024).  Purported stalking victims sued over location tracking devices.  Id.  Hughes is a class action.

“The AirTag is a small, affordable location-tracking device manufactured and sold by Apple…. From the beginning, it was obvious that the AirTag would be an especially useful tool for stalkers. So Apple has designed it with features that aim to diminish the ability of stalkers to use it effectively. But the plaintiffs allege that those features are inadequate, and that Apple could and should have done more.”  Hughes v. Apple, Inc., 723 F. Supp. 3d 693, 696 (N.D. Cal. 2024).¹

First, the court reviewed the redactions in a sample of documents:

[T]he redactions Plaintiffs have made in the examples submitted are quite restrained. It’s obvious that careful thought went into these redactions, and these redactions do not look like an effort to conceal relevant evidence. In context, sometimes you can tell the particular reason for a redaction, but many times you can’t just from looking at the redacted document, and the redaction log usually says that the redaction concerns a physical condition for which emotional distress is not a recognized symptom, or alternatively, medication or treatment not prescribed for emotional distress and/or prescribed for physical condition for which emotional distress is not a recognized symptom.

However, Apple sought additional information about the redactions:

Having reviewed these examples in camera, the Court has come to the conclusion that the level of detail Apple seeks for each redaction is completely infeasible. As a purely academic matter, if you just thought about it in the abstract, Apple’s request for “(1) Plaintiff-specific showings for each redaction; (2) contextual explanations demonstrating why the redacted information is not directly related to the mental conditions placed at issue; and (3) sufficient identifying information to allow Apple to assess the propriety of Plaintiffs’ redactions” might seem logical. But this collapses under the weight of reality when you realize the volume of redactions and medical records at issue.

The court wrote that the total volume of records appeared to be “enormous,” and concluded that Apple requested “an unjustifiable amount of work. Discovery is supposed to be proportional to the needs of the case, see Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 26(b)(1), and sometimes the Court’s job is to declare that perfection isn’t worth it. This is one of those times, and Apple’s motion to compel is therefore DENIED.” [emphasis added].

In an earlier decision, the court wrote: “When it comes to medical records, the Court has already rejected Apple’s argument that Plaintiffs’ claims of emotional distress damages entitled Apple to unfettered access to medical records – on the theory that any medical issue could be distressing and therefore an alternative cause of damages.”  Hughes v. Apple, Inc., 2025 WL 3101787, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 6, 2025).

Notes

1. The decision describes the features Apple designed and plaintiffs’ complaints about them. ↩︎

Assisted by GAI and LLM Technologies per EDRM GAI and LLM Policy.