[EDRM Editor’s Note: The opinions and positions are those of the Michael D. Berman.]
A putative class of subscribers to LinkedIn’s premium services sued and alleged monopolization or attempted monopolization of the social networking market. Crowder v. LinkedIn Corporation, 2026 WL 2076152 (N.D. Cal. Jul. 17, 2026).
They sought depositions in excess of those provided for by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure based on documents that had been produced from multiple custodians. The court held that not every document custodian should be deposed and: “Custodians are chosen because their files are likely to contain responsive documents, which is a reason to collect their files, not necessarily a reason to depose them.” Id. at *3.
Plaintiffs asked for leave to take 27 fact depositions of party witnesses, “without prejudice to seeking more.” In response:
LinkedIn asks the court to (1) hold the plaintiffs to the presumptive ten depositions, (2) require them to serve their Rule 30(b)(6) notice now, and (3) require them to coordinate with LinkedIn on overlapping Rule 30(b)(1) and 30(b)(6) witnesses.
The ruling moved toward the center: “The court grants the plaintiffs’ motion in part: the plaintiffs may take up to fifteen depositions of party witnesses, a number that includes one Rule 30(b)(6) deposition of LinkedIn, without prejudice to a renewed, witness-specific showing of need for additional depositions.” They were directed to coordinate overlapping depositions.
The court wrote that: “Document discovery to date has been extensive: LinkedIn has nineteen designated custodians, including former CEO Ryan Roslansky and current CEO Daniel Shapero, and it has produced thousands of custodial documents.”
The 27 requested depositions were party witnesses. They included current or former senior executives and four groups of current or former employees. The court wrote: “For each proposed deponent, the plaintiffs cite produced documents that, they contend, show the witness’s personal involvement in the challenged conduct (which spans ten years) or unique knowledge of market definition, monopoly power, or pricing, all topics central to the plaintiffs’ claims.”
“LinkedIn responds that the plaintiffs’ showing of particularized need largely rests on the witnesses being designated custodians or appearing in the document production. It contends that the plaintiffs misread many of the documents they cite and provides an appendix that, it asserts, provides the fuller context for those produced materials. LinkedIn contends that several of the plaintiffs’ proposed deponents (including an in-house lawyer and the engineer who leads LinkedIn’s AI-inference platform) have nothing to do with the challenged conduct, and that other witnesses are at least facially duplicative because they work on the same issues and teams.”
Custodial status and document counts do not, by themselves, establish that a witness will offer relevant and non-cumulative deposition testimony.
Crowder v. LinkedIn Corporation, 2026 WL 2076152, at *3 (N.D. Cal. Jul. 17, 2026).
The court explained that: “Rule 30(a)(2) limits the number of depositions that each side may take (without leave or stipulation) to ten. A party seeking to exceed the presumptive number of depositions must make a particularized showing of the need for the additional discovery…. To that end, courts will generally not grant leave to expand the number of depositions until the moving party has exhausted the ten depositions permitted as of right under Rule 30(a)(2)…. When evaluating a party’s request to expand discovery limitations, the court must ensure that the discovery sought is relevant to the party’s claims or defenses and not unreasonably cumulative, duplicative, or burdensome.” Id. at *2 (cleaned up).
The court found that 10 depositions were too few: “The plaintiffs’ claims are ‘narrow’ in the sense that they target two categories of conduct, but that conduct spans more than a decade, hundreds of API agreements, a major cloud migration, and pricing across multiple Premium product lines. The document production to date reflects this scope, with thousands of custodial files produced. And this court’s previous orders have acknowledged the breadth of the underlying conduct by ordering additional custodians and search terms. While sometimes courts require a party to exhaust the depositions it is permitted before seeking more, courts depart from this when there are multiple parties and the case’s complexity warrants more depositions.” Id. at *3. That situation was presented here. Id.
“But,” the court continued, “twenty-seven depositions is too many, at least on this record. Much of the plaintiffs’ showing hinges on the requested witnesses being designated custodians or appearing on produced documents. This falls short of the plaintiffs’ burden of making a particularized showing of need: custodial status and document counts do not, by themselves, establish that a witness will offer relevant and non-cumulative deposition testimony.” Id. at *3 (emphasis added). In short, not every custodian must be deposed. Id. The court also identified a “duplication problem” in plaintiffs’ request. “And for some of the twenty-seven witnesses, relevance is thin….” Id.
The court’s holding was: “A reasonable approach lies between the parties’ positions: leave to take up to fifteen depositions of party witnesses, a number that includes one Rule 30(b)(6) deposition of LinkedIn (which counts as one deposition regardless of the number of designees)…. This middle course is consistent with decisions managing comparable cases.” Id. at *4. It left the door open to additional, particularized requests.
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