Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_16-cv-02276/USCOURTS-cand-3_16-cv-02276-13/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 29:621 Job Discrimination (Age)

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

STEVE RABIN, ET AL.,

Plaintiffs,

v.

PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS LLP,

Defendant.

Case No.16-cv-02276-JST 

DISCOVERY ORDER

ECF No. 112

This is a putative class action alleging that defendant PricewaterhouseCoopers (“PwC”) 

discriminated in hiring on the basis of age. On May 26, 2016, the parties submitted a joint 

discovery letter brief, which presents two main disputes: 1) an appropriate proxy for age, given 

that PwC’s applicant database does not contain information regarding each applicant’s age; and 2) 

who the appropriate comparators to class members are.

1

 The Court addresses each dispute below.

I. Age Proxy

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s (“PwC”) Source1 database contains a variety of 

information about job applicants, but does not include applicants’ dates of birth (“DOBs”). 

Because this is an age discrimination case, the question is whether there is an appropriate proxy 

for DOB that would allow the parties to identify whether an applicant was (or was not) a class 

member. 

 

1 One method of demonstrating age discrimination is by showing that similarly situated 

individuals who were younger than class members received more favorable treatment in the 

application process. These similarly situated individuals are called “comparators.” Whether 

individuals are similarly situated is ordinarily a question of fact. Hawn v. Exec. Jet Mgmt., Inc., 

615 F.3d 1151, 1157 (9th Cir. 2010). The other applicants “need not be identical; they must only 

be similar ‘in all material respects.’” Id. (quoting Moran v. Selig, 447 F.3d 748, 755 (9th 

Cir.2006). 

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The parties previously agreed to the following age proxy process: 1) PwC would provide

Plaintiffs with a list of fields in the Source1 database, 2) Plaintiffs would choose an age proxy 

field, and 3) PwC would produce the information in certain other data fields for both purported 

class members and comparators identified by using the age proxy. In February 2017, Plaintiffs 

identified undergraduate graduation date as the best age proxy field. ECF No. 112-10. Plaintiffs 

proposed that all applicants who graduated 11 years before the application date should be 

presumed to be over 40. ECF No. 112-13. PwC responded that the spread should be 16 years, not 

11. ECF No. 112-14. 

On May 10, 2017, while the parties were still debating the appropriate spread, Plaintiffs 

approached PwC with a new proposal. Plaintiffs proposed that PwC turn over ten “identifying 

fields”

2

for all 250,0003applicants at issue to Accurint, an IT company owned by Lexis-Nexus. 

ECF No. 112-15. Plaintiffs claim that Accurint will be able to identify DOBs for over 95% of the 

250,000 PwC applicants by cross-checking PwC’s data with the 6.5 billion public records

Accurint has compiled and cross-referenced. ECF No. 112 at 3. PwC opposes this proposal. 

From the Court’s perspective, there are three key questions4for determining whether 

Plaintiffs should be permitted to depart from the parties’ previously agreed-upon age proxy 

process: 1) whether the Accurint proposal would place an additional burden on Defendant, 2) 

whether the Accurint proposal is more likely than the age proxy process to produce reliable 

 

2

The identifying fields include Address, City, State, Zip, Email, First Name, Middle Name, Last 

Name, Job Title, and Phone. ECF No. 112 at 3. 

3

The Court was informed at the hearing on this letter brief that the 250,000 figure represents all 

applicants (rather than applications) to the relevant jobs in the relevant lines of business during the 

relevant time period. This is the same universe of applications from which Plaintiffs would have 

selected an age proxy pursuant to the parties’ original discussions. 

 

4 Neither of the cases cites by the parties on this issue is helpful. The discovery orders in EEOC v. 

Darden, on which Plaintiffs rely, are too conclusory to provide much guidance and appear to focus 

mostly on whether an Accurint report should be discoverable once it has already been produced. 

No. 15-20561 (S.D. Fla.)(ECF Nos. 87 and 175). PwC’s emphasis on Heath v. Google is similarly 

unpersuasive. 215 F. Supp. 3d 844, 859 (N.D. Cal. 2016). The fact that parties in a different case 

used college graduation as an age proxy does not mean that it is the best method for identifying 

older and younger applicants here. 

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information about class membership, and 3) whether Plaintiffs suggested replacing the age proxy 

process in good faith. 

As for the first question, the Court is not convinced that the Accurint proposal would 

substantially increase PwC’s burden because PwC would need to run a similar Data Insight Tool 

(“DIT”) report under either proposal. As the Court understands it, to implement the age proxy 

process, PwC would create a DIT report containing college graduation date (the age proxy field), 

application date, and several other “targeted fields” selected by Plaintiffs.

5

 After adding either 11 

or 16 years to each applicant’s graduation date, PwC would use the application date to sort the 

DIT spreadsheet into older and younger applicants (i.e., purported class members and 

comparators). PwC would then cull the spreadsheet to provide Plaintiffs with only the targeted 

fields to which the parties previously agreed. Under the Accurint proposal, PwC would run a 

similar DIT report and provide Accurint with the resulting spreadsheet. Accurint would return to 

PwC the same spreadsheet but with an additional DOB field filled in for some percentage of the 

250,000 applicants.

6

PwC would then perform the same sorting process just described. 

Presumably, it would eliminate those applicants for whom no DOB had been located. Then, PwC 

would compare the DOB field to the application date to divide the spreadsheet into older and 

younger applicants. Finally, as with the age proxy process, PwC would cull the spreadsheet to 

only the targeted fields and produce the data to Plaintiffs.7 

PwC has not persuaded the Court that the Accurint process is more burdensome than the 

age-proxy process. Even if, for example, the DIT report for the Accurint process required two or 

three additional fields, the total number of fields for either process would still be well under the 75 

fields that can apparently be included in one DIT Report. ECF No. 112-9. PwC does not rebut 

 

5

These include position/job title, line of service, office location, and application outcome. ECF 

No. 96 at 10. The Court takes no position on whether Plaintiffs are entitled to college and 

graduate school graduation dates. ECF No. 112 at 3 n.8. 

6

The comprehensiveness and accuracy of Accurint’s data is discussed below. 

7

PwC is wrong to equate this proposal with Plaintiffs’ earlier request for all two million entries in 

the Source1 database. 

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Plaintiffs’ claim that generating a single DIT report would take only 30 minutes, ECF No. 112 

(objecting that the 30 minute figure is “for preparing a single DIT, not for numerous DITs or the 

lengthy [quality control] process”) (emphasis in original), and a single DIT is all that Plaintiffs are 

asking for. At the hearing on this letter brief, PwC argued the Accurint proposal would require a 

more burdensome QC check process. But PwC failed to articulate how the QC process would be 

more difficult or time consuming than it would be under the age proxy proposal. Nor did PwC 

explain what the purpose of such a check would be under either approach. Presumably, Plaintiffs 

would prefer PwC’s unreliable data to no data at all, even if the QC check revealed flaws in the 

DIT report. Finally, PwC claims that the Accurint process would create additional steps or a 

“second round” of data pulling for PwC beyond what would be required for the age proxy process. 

But given the processes described above, the Court does not understand why that would be so. If 

PwC includes all the relevant fields in the initial DIT report that it sends to Accurint, there would 

be no need to run another report once Accurint returns the spreadsheet with the DOB field. PwC 

would simply need to delete all but the targeted fields before sending to Plaintiffs. PwC, as the 

keeper of the data, is best positioned to describe and quantify the additional burden it would face 

from the proposed Accurint process. It failed to do so here. 

Next, the Court asks whether the Accurint process is substantively better than the age 

proxy process. In other words, will Accurint’s process produce more compressive and accurate 

results? As both parties acknowledge, the age proxy process suffers from a number of flaws. 

First, regardless of whether the PwC employs an 11- or 16-year spread, using college graduation 

as an age proxy will produce results that are both underinclusive and overinclusive. For example, 

if an applicant graduated from college 16 years before she applied to PwC (an applicant that would 

be covered under either spread), there is only a 35% chance the applicant is actually over 40. ECF 

NO. 112-2 at 2. That means many younger applicants will mistakenly be included in the pool of 

older applicants. Conversely, if an applicant graduated from college 10 years before she applied 

to PwC (an applicant that would be excluded under either spread), there is a 16% chance the 

applicant is over 40. Id. Put another way, even the more inclusive 11-year spread would lead to 

roughly thousands of older applicants being improperly excluded from the older applicant pool. 

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Id. Indeed, Plaintiffs represent that “only 21.7% of older applicants would be captured by a 

college-graduation-based age proxy of 16 years.” ECF No. 112 at 2. In addition to these 

inclusivity concerns, the age proxy field is missing altogether in 20% of the 250,000 universe of 

applications. 

The Accurint proposal must be considered against this backdrop. The parties disagree 

about the likely comprehensiveness of Accurint’s DOB data. Plaintiffs claim that Accurint’s DOB

hit rate will be over 95%. ECF No. 112 at 3. In other words, Plaintiffs say that, given the 

identifying fields, Accurint will return a DOB for at least 95% of the 250,000 applicants. ECF No. 

112-8. But as PwC points out, that 95% figure is based on partial or full DOB or social security 

number inputs. Id. Obviously, Plaintiffs do not have DOB data since that is the output they are 

seeking. Nor can Plaintiffs provide Social Security numbers to Accurint, since PwC does not 

collect them from applicants. ECF No. 112 at 5. Instead, PwC’s separate inquiries with Accurint 

suggest that, given the identifying fields that PwC can provide, the hit rate will be closer to 50% 

than 95%. ECF No. 112-16. Even if the 50% figure is the correct one, however, the Accurint 

process is still superior in terms of comprehensiveness to the age proxy process, which would 

capture only 28.6% of older applicants using Plaintiffs’ more inclusive 11-year spread (and 21.7% 

using Defendant’s 16-year spread). ECF No. 112-2.8 In other words, notwithstanding its 

limitations, the Accurint process is more thorough and accurate. 

Setting the hit rate to one side, PwC also challenges the reliability of the DOBs that 

Accurint can produce. It seems beyond question that the Accurint data would contain some errors. 

Nevertheless, at least it produces specific DOBs ‒ unlike the age proxy process, which the parties 

both recognize will generate a pool of older applicants that includes substantial numbers of false 

positives. Moreover, Defendant can use its Human Resources database, which does contain DOBs 

for hired applicants, to measure and potentially challenge the reliability of this evidence in 

opposing a conditional certification motion. 

As for the last factor, the Court sees no indication that Plaintiffs changed course on this 

 

8

Taking into account the fact that the age proxy field is only available for 80% of applicants, the 

actual percentage is even lower. 

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issue in bad faith. Rather, the Court takes Plaintiffs at their word that, after negotiating the 

appropriate age proxy in good faith, they discovered what appeared to them to be “an elegant, 

superior solution.” ECF No. 112 at 2. They then raised this alternative proposal with PwC. 

In sum, though by no means perfect, the Accurint proposal is likely to produce more 

comprehensive and reliable results with minimal additional burden on PwC. The Court orders the 

parties to proceed with the Accurint process but will not require PwC to split the cost.

II. Comparators

The parties also dispute who qualifies as a comparator. Plaintiffs seek to define 

comparators as “all applicants to the relevant job positions during the relevant period who are not 

potential class members.” ECF No. 112 at 8. PwC would limit comparators to those applicants 

who applied to the same job requisition as an older applicant. Id. at 10. The Court will adopt 

PwC’s definition.

As a general matter, it is true that the actual pool of applicants need not always be the outer 

limit in terms of defining the comparator class. See Moore v. Hughes Helicoptors, 708 F.2d 475, 

482 (9th Cir. 1983) (“Disparate impact should always be measured against the actual pool of 

applicants or eligible employees unless there is a characteristic of the challenged selection device 

that makes use of the actual pool of applicants or eligible employees inappropriate”) (emphasis 

added). That said, the cases in which courts have allowed broader comparator discovery tend to 

be individual plaintiff cases where the additional data sought beyond the applicant pool is limited. 

For example, in Diaz v. AT&T, the Ninth Circuit held that the district court had erred in limiting 

an individual plaintiff’s comparator discovery to the company’s promotion decisions in its Tucson 

office, where the plaintiff worked, rather than in the greater “Western Region.” 752 F.2d 1356, 

1363 (9th Cir. 1985). Moreover, not only was Diaz a single plaintiff case, but the plaintiff 

specifically alleged he would have taken a promotion outside of Tucson, had one been available. 

Id. Similarly, Plaintiffs point to Ingram v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., No. 12-CV-02777-JST, 

2013 WL 6174487, at *4-5 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 25, 2013), in which an individual plaintiff alleged that 

he was terminated because of race. This Court concluded that the plaintiff was entitled to

evidence of terminations at 46 PG&E substations, not just the one at which he had worked. Id. 

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The Court explained that limiting plaintiff to only his substation would result in a sample size so 

small that it would be difficult to perform any statistical analysis, and noted that identifying 

terminations among the 1500 employees of the extra 46 substations was unlikely to be 

burdensome. Id. By contrast, this is a collective action where even PwC’s proposed comparator 

definition would lead to discovery on thousands of applications. There is little risk that Plaintiffs 

would be unable to perform a statistical analysis without the additional discovery they seek. Nor 

have Plaintiffs made particular allegations, like in Diaz, that justify expanding comparator class 

beyond the actual pool of applicants. Finally, adopting Plaintiffs’ comparator definition could

substantially increase the volume of data discovery. 

Plaintiffs also argue that PwC’s definition is too narrow because ““PwC recruiters can 

search for past applicants to other requisitions, to encourage them to apply.” ECF No. 112 at 8. 

According to Plaintiffs, this justifies expanding the comparator class to include any applicant to 

one of the relevant positions. But as Plaintiffs acknowledged at the hearing, if a recruiter 

encourages a candidate for Requisition A to apply for Requisition B, and the candidate decides to 

do so, her application would then appear in the list for Requisition B and be covered under PwC’s 

approach. PwC’s recruitment practices therefore do not support expanding the comparator class to 

requisitions beyond those to which an older applicant applied. 

The Court orders the parties to proceed under PwC’s comparator definition.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: June 29, 2017

______________________________________

JON S. TIGAR

United States District Judge

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