Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caed-2_05-cv-02295/USCOURTS-caed-2_05-cv-02295-4/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
California-American Water Company
Counter Defendant
Department of the Air Force of the United States of America
Counter Claimant
United States of America
Counter Claimant

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704206.01/SF Case No. 05-CV-02295-LKK-EFB 

STIPULATED PROTECTIVE ORDER 

DAVID D. COOKE (BAR NO. 94939) 

EMILY L. MURRAY (BAR NO. 223815) 

CATHY A. HONGOLA (BAR NO. 234489) 

ALLEN MATKINS LECK GAMBLE MALLORY & NATSIS LLP 

Three Embarcadero Center, 12th Floor 

San Francisco, CA 94111-4074 

Telephone: (415) 837-1515 

Facsimile: (415) 837-1516 

E-Mail: dcooke@allenmatkins.com 

 emurray@allenmatkins.com 

 chongola@allenmatkins.com 

Attorneys for Plaintiff 

CALIFORNIA-AMERICAN WATER COMPANY 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 

CALIFORNIA-AMERICAN WATER 

COMPANY, a California corporation, 

Plaintiff, 

vs. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, a sovereign 

state and national government, DEPARTMENT 

OF THE AIR FORCE OF THE UNITED 

STATES OF AMERICA, an agency within the 

United States, 

Defendants. 

Case No. 05-CV-02295-LKK-EFB 

STIPULATED PROTECTIVE ORDER

Plaintiff California-American Water Company (“Cal-Am”), and Defendants United States 

of America and Department of the Air Force of the United States of America (“Air Force”), 

hereby stipulate as follows: 

1. PURPOSES AND LIMITATIONS

Disclosure and discovery activity in this action are likely to involve production of 

confidential, proprietary, or private information for which special protection from public 

disclosure and from use for any purpose other than prosecuting this litigation would be warranted. 

Accordingly, the parties hereby stipulate to and petition the court to enter the following Stipulated 

Protective Order. The parties acknowledge that this Order does not confer blanket protections on 

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all disclosures or responses to discovery and that the protection it affords extends only to the 

limited information or items that are entitled under the applicable legal principles to treatment as 

confidential. The parties further acknowledge, as set forth in Section 10, below, that this 

Stipulated Protective Order creates no entitlement to file confidential information under seal; Civil 

Local Rule 39-141 sets forth the procedures that must be followed and reflects the standards that 

will be applied when a party seeks permission from the court to file material under seal. 

2. DEFINITIONS

2.1 Party: any party to this action, including all of its officers, directors, members, employees, 

consultants, retained experts, and outside counsel (and their support staff). 

2.2 Disclosure or Discovery Material: all items or information, regardless of the medium or 

manner generated, stored, or maintained (including, among other things, testimony, transcripts, 

or tangible things) that are produced or generated in disclosures or responses to discovery in 

this matter. 

2.3 “Confidential” Information or Items: information (regardless of how generated, stored or 

maintained) or tangible things that qualify for protection under F.R.Civ.P. 26(c). 

2.4 Receiving Party: a Party that receives Disclosure or Discovery Material from a Producing 

Party. 

2.5 Producing Party: a Party or non-party that produces Disclosure or Discovery Material in 

this action. 

2.6 Designating Party: a Party or non-party that designates information or items that it 

produces in disclosures or in responses to discovery as “Confidential”. 

2.7 Protected Material: any Disclosure or Discovery Material that is designated as 

“Confidential.” 

2.8 Expert: a person with specialized knowledge or experience in a matter pertinent to the 

litigation who has been retained by a Party or its counsel to serve as an expert witness or as a 

consultant in this action and who is not a past or a current employee of a Party or of a 

competitor of a Party’s and who, at the time of retention, is not anticipated to become an 

employee of a Party or a competitor of a Party’s. This definition includes a professional jury 

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or trial consultant retained in connection with this litigation. 

2.9 Professional Vendors: persons or entities that provide litigation support services (e.g., 

photocopying; videotaping; translating; preparing exhibits or demonstrations; organizing, 

storing, retrieving data in any form or medium; etc.) and their employees and subcontractors. 

3. SCOPE

The protections conferred by this Stipulation and Order cover not only Protected Material 

(as defined above), but also any information copied or extracted therefrom, as well as all copies, 

excerpts, summaries, or compilations thereof, plus testimony, conversations, or presentations by 

parties or counsel to or in court or in other settings that might reveal Protected Material. 

4. DURATION

Even after the termination of this litigation, the confidentiality obligations imposed by this 

Order shall remain in effect until a Designating Party agrees otherwise in writing or a court order 

otherwise directs. 

5. DESIGNATING PROTECTED MATERIAL

5.1 Exercise of Restraint and Care in Designating Material for Protection. Each Party or nonparty that designates information or items for protection under this Order must take care to 

limit any such designation to specific material that qualifies under the appropriate standards. 

A Designating Party must take care to designate for protection only those parts of material, 

documents, items, or oral or written communications that qualify – so that other portions of the 

material, documents, items, or communications for which protection is not warranted are not 

swept unjustifiably within the ambit of this Order. 

Mass, indiscriminate, or routinized designations are prohibited. Designations that are 

shown to be clearly unjustified, or that have been made for an improper purpose (e.g., to 

unnecessarily encumber or retard the case development process, or to impose unnecessary 

expenses and burdens on other parties), expose the Designating Party to sanctions. 

If it comes to a Party’s or a non-party’s attention that information or items that it 

designated for protection do not qualify for protection at all, or do not qualify for the level of 

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protection initially asserted, that Party or non-party must promptly notify all other parties that it is 

withdrawing the mistaken designation.

5.2 Manner and Timing of Designations. Except as otherwise provided in this Order (, or as 

otherwise stipulated or ordered, material that qualifies for protection under this Order shall be 

designated by affixing the legend "CONFIDENTIAL" on each page that contains protected 

material. If only a portion or portions of the material on a page qualifies for protection, the 

Producing Party also must clearly identify the protected portion(s) (e.g., by making appropriate 

markings in the margins). 

(a) A Party or non-party that makes original documents or materials available for inspection 

need not designate them for protection until after the inspecting Party has indicated which material 

it would like copied and produced. After the inspecting Party has identified the documents it 

wants copied and produced, the Producing Party may designate which documents, or portions 

thereof, shall be deemed "CONFIDENTIAL". 

(b) for testimony given in deposition or in other pretrial or trial proceedings, the Party or nonparty offering or sponsoring the testimony shall identify on the record, before the close of the 

deposition, hearing, or other proceeding, all "Confidential" testimony. When it is impractical to 

identify separately each portion of testimony that is entitled to protection, and when it appears that 

substantial portions of the testimony may qualify for protection, the Party or non-party that 

sponsors, offers, or gives the testimony may have up to twenty (20) days to identify the specific 

portions of the testimony as to which protection is sought. Only those portions of the testimony 

that are appropriately designated for protection within the twenty (20) days shall be covered by the 

provisions of this Stipulated Protective Order. 

Transcript pages containing Protected Material must be separately bound by the court 

reporter, who must affix on each such page the legend “CONFIDENTIAL”, as instructed by the 

Party or non-party offering or sponsoring the witness or presenting the testimony. 

5.3 Inadvertent Failures to Designate. If timely corrected, an inadvertent failure to designate 

qualified information or items as “CONFIDENTIAL” does not, standing alone, waive the 

Designating Party’s right to secure protection under this Order for such material. If material is 

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appropriately designated as “CONFIDENTIAL” after the material was initially produced, the 

Receiving Party, on timely notification of the designation, must make reasonable efforts to 

assure that the material is treated in accordance with the provisions of this Order. 

6. CHALLENGING CONFIDENTIALITY DESIGNATIONS

6.1 Timing of Challenges. Unless a prompt challenge to a Designating Party’s confidentiality 

designation is necessary to avoid foreseeable substantial unfairness, unnecessary economic 

burdens, or a later significant disruption or delay of the litigation, a Party does not waive its 

right to challenge a confidentiality designation by electing not to mount a challenge promptly 

after the original designation is disclosed. 

6.2 Meet and Confer. A Party that elects to initiate a challenge to a Designating Party’s 

confidentiality designation must do so in good faith and must begin the process by conferring 

directly (in voice to voice dialogue; other forms of communication are not sufficient) with 

counsel for the Designating Party. In conferring, the challenging Party must explain the basis 

for its belief that the confidentiality designation was not proper and must give the Designating 

Party an opportunity to review the designated material, to reconsider the circumstances, and, if 

no change in designation is offered, to explain the basis for the chosen designation. A 

challenging Party may proceed to the next stage of the challenge process only if it has engaged 

in this meet and confer process first. 

6.3 Judicial Intervention. A Party that elects to press a challenge to a confidentiality 

designation after considering the justification offered by the Designating Party may file and 

serve a motion under Civil Local Rule 78-230 (and in compliance with Civil Local Rules 37-

251 and 39-141, if applicable) that identifies the challenged material and sets forth in detail the 

basis for the challenge. Each such motion must be accompanied by a competent declaration 

that affirms that the movant has complied with the meet and confer requirements imposed in 

the preceding paragraph, and that sets forth with specificity the justification for the 

confidentiality designation that was given by the Designating Party in the meet and confer 

dialogue. 

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The burden of persuasion in any such challenge proceeding shall be on the Designating 

Party. Until the court rules on the challenge, all parties shall continue to afford the material in 

question the level of protection to which it is entitled under the Producing Party’s designation. 

7. ACCESS TO AND USE OF PROTECTED MATERIAL

7.1 Basic Principles. A Receiving Party may use Protected Material that is disclosed or 

produced by another Party or by a non-party in connection with this case only for prosecuting, 

defending, or attempting to settle this litigation. Such Protected Material may be disclosed 

only to the categories of persons and under the conditions described in this Order. When the 

litigation has been terminated, a Receiving Party must comply with the provisions of section 

11, below (FINAL DISPOSITION). 

Protected Material must be stored and maintained by a Receiving Party at a location and in 

a secure manner that ensures that access is limited to the persons authorized under this Order. 

7.2 Disclosure of “CONFIDENTIAL” Information or Items. Unless otherwise ordered by the 

court or permitted in writing by the Designating Party, a Receiving Party may disclose any 

information or item designated CONFIDENTIAL only to: 

(a) the Receiving Party’s Outside Counsel of record in this action, as well as employees of 

said Counsel to whom it is reasonably necessary to disclose the information for this litigation 

and who have signed the “Agreement to Be Bound by Protective Order” that is attached hereto 

as Exhibit A; 

(b) the officers, directors, members, employees and contractors (including House Counsel) of 

the Receiving Party to whom disclosure is reasonably necessary for this litigation and who 

have signed the “Agreement to Be Bound by Protective Order” (Exhibit A); 

(c) Experts (as defined in this Order) of the Receiving Party to whom disclosure is reasonably 

necessary for this litigation and who have signed the “Agreement to Be Bound by Protective 

Order” (Exhibit A); 

(d) the Court and its personnel; 

(e) court reporters, their staffs, and Professional Vendors to whom disclosure is reasonably 

necessary for this litigation and who have signed the “Agreement to Be Bound by Protective 

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Order” (Exhibit A); 

(f) during their depositions, witnesses in the action to whom disclosure is reasonably 

necessary and who have signed the “Agreement to Be Bound by Protective Order” (Exhibit 

A). Pages of transcribed deposition testimony or exhibits to depositions that reveal Protected 

Material must be separately bound by the court reporter and may not be disclosed to anyone 

except as permitted under this Stipulated Protective Order; and 

(g) the author of the document or the original source of the information. 

8. PROTECTED MATERIAL SUBPOENAED OR ORDERED PRODUCED IN OTHER 

LITIGATION. 

If a Receiving Party is served with a subpoena or an order issued in other litigation that 

would compel disclosure of any information or items designated in this action as 

“CONFIDENTIAL”, the Receiving Party must so notify the Designating Party, in writing (by fax, 

if possible) immediately and in no event more than three (3) court days after receiving the 

subpoena or order. Such notification must include a copy of the subpoena or court order. 

The Receiving Party also must immediately inform in writing the Party who caused the 

subpoena or order to issue in the other litigation that some or all the material covered by the 

subpoena or order is the subject of this Protective Order. In addition, the Receiving Party must 

deliver a copy of this Stipulated Protective Order promptly to the Party in the other action that 

caused the subpoena or order to issue. 

The purpose of imposing these duties is to alert the interested parties to the existence of 

this Protective Order and to afford the Designating Party in this case an opportunity to try to 

protect its confidentiality interests in the court from which the subpoena or order issued. The 

Designating Party shall bear the burdens and the expenses of seeking protection in that court of its 

confidential material – and nothing in these provisions should be construed as authorizing or 

encouraging a Receiving Party in this action to disobey a lawful directive from another court. 

9. UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE OF PROTECTED MATERIAL

If a Receiving Party learns that, by inadvertence or otherwise, it has disclosed Protected 

Material to any person or in any circumstance not authorized under this Stipulated Protective 

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Order, the Receiving Party must immediately (a) notify in writing the Designating Party of the 

unauthorized disclosures, (b) use its best efforts to retrieve all copies of the Protected Material, 

(c) inform the person or persons to whom unauthorized disclosures were made of all the terms of 

this Order, and (d) request such person or persons to execute the “Acknowledgment and 

Agreement to Be Bound” that is attached hereto as Exhibit A. 

10. FILING PROTECTED MATERIAL. Without written permission from the Designating 

Party or a court order secured after appropriate notice to all interested persons, a Party may not file 

in the public record in this action any Protected Material. A Party that seeks to file under seal any 

Protected Material must comply with Civil Local Rule 39-141. 

11. FINAL DISPOSITION. Unless otherwise ordered or agreed in writing by the Producing 

Party, within sixty (60) days after the final termination of this action, each Receiving Party must 

return all Protected Material to the Producing Party. As used in this subdivision, “all Protected 

Material” includes all copies, abstracts, compilations, summaries or any other form of reproducing 

or capturing any of the Protected Material. With permission in writing from the Designating 

Party, the Receiving Party may destroy some or all of the Protected Material instead of returning 

it. Whether the Protected Material is returned or destroyed, the Receiving Party must submit a 

written certification to the Producing Party (and, if not the same person or entity, to the 

Designating Party) by the sixty (60) day deadline that identifies (by category, where appropriate) 

all the Protected Material that was returned or destroyed and that affirms that the Receiving Party 

has not retained any copies, abstracts, compilations, summaries or other forms of reproducing or 

capturing any of the Protected Material. Notwithstanding this provision, Counsel are entitled to 

retain an archival copy of all pleadings, motion papers, transcripts, legal memoranda, 

correspondence or attorney work product, even if such materials contain Protected Material. Any 

such archival copies that contain or constitute Protected Material remain subject to this Protective 

Order as set forth in Section 4 (DURATION) above. 

12. MISCELLANEOUS

12.1 Right to Further Relief. Nothing in this Order abridges the right of any person to seek its 

modification by the Court in the future. 

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12.2 Right to Assert Other Objections. By stipulating to the entry of this Protective Order no 

Party waives any right it otherwise would have to object to disclosing or producing any 

information or item on any ground not addressed in this Stipulated Protective Order. 

Similarly, no Party waives any right to object on any ground to use in evidence of any of the 

material covered by this Protective Order. 

IT IS SO STIPULATED, THROUGH COUNSEL OF RECORD. 

Dated: March 15, 2007 ALLEN MATKINS LECK GAMBLE 

 MALLORY & NATSIS LLP 

 DAVID D. COOKE 

 EMILY L. MURRAY 

CATHY A. HONGOLA 

By: /s/ David D. Cooke

DAVID D. COOKE 

Attorneys for Plaintiff 

Dated: March 15, 2007 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF 

JUSTICE 

MCGREGOR SCOTT 

 MATTHEW J. McKEOWN 

By: /s/ Tara M. Bahn (as authorized 3/15/07) 

TARA M. BAHN 

Attorneys for Defendants 

PURSUANT TO STIPULATION, IT IS SO ORDERED. 

DATED: March 27, 2007. 

 ___________________________________ 

 HON. EDMUND F. BRENNAN 

 UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE 

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EXHIBIT A

ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND AGREEMENT TO BE BOUND 

I, _____________________________ [print or type full name], of _________________ 

[print or type full address], declare under penalty of perjury that I have read in its entirety and 

understand the Protective Order that was issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern 

District of California on [date] in the case of California-American Water Company. v. United 

States, Case No. 05-CV-02295-LKK EFB. I agree to comply with and to be bound by all the 

terms of this Protective Order and I understand and acknowledge that failure to so comply could 

expose me to sanctions and punishment in the nature of contempt. I solemnly promise that I will 

not disclose in any manner any information or item that is subject to this Protective Order to any 

person or entity except in strict compliance with the provisions of this Order. 

I further agree to submit to the jurisdiction of the United States District Court for the 

Eastern District of California for the purpose of enforcing the terms of this Protective Order, even 

if such enforcement proceedings occur after termination of this action. 

[Optional] I hereby appoint __________________________ [print or type full name] of 

_______________________________________ [print or type full address and telephone number] 

as my California agent for service of process in connection with this action or any proceedings 

related to enforcement of this Stipulated Protective Order. 

Date: _________________________________ 

City and State where sworn and signed: _________________________________ 

Printed name: ______________________________ 

[printed name] 

Signature: __________________________________ 

 [signature] 

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