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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

SAN JOSE DIVISION

INSIGHT GLOBAL, LLC,

Plaintiff,

v.

BEACON HILL STAFFING GROUP, LLC,

Defendant.

Case No.5:17-cv-00309-BLF (HRL)

ORDER RE DISCOVERY DISPUTE 

JOINT REPORT NO. 1

Re: Dkt. No. 37

The event that sparked this acrimonious dispute began on October 26, 2016. On that date 

Insight Global LLC (“Insight”), a staffing services company, fired John Barker, the manager of 

Insight’s San Francisco office. Soon thereafter Barker obtained comparable employment with 

Beacon Hill Staffing Group LLC (“Beacon Hill”), another staffing services company, one that 

competed with Insight. Barker then sued Insight to recover deferred compensation that allegedly 

was wrongfully denied to him and also sought a declaratory judgment that certain non-competition 

and non-solicitation restrictions on him in his Insight employment agreement were unlawful and 

void under California law. Insight cross-complained against Barker for his alleged breach of the 

employment agreement, in particular for him having successfully solicited three valuable Insight 

employees (Messrs. Cronin, McArthur, and Verduzco) to quit Insight and join him at Beacon Hill. 

See 5:16-cv-07186-BLF Barker v. Insight Global (“Barker Action”).
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United States District Court

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A month after Barker filed his lawsuit, Insight filed the present lawsuit against Beacon 

Hill. (The presiding judge related the two cases, and they will be tried together.) This second suit 

alleges that Beacon Hill induced Barker to breach his non-competition and non-solicitation 

obligations to Insight. Further, it claims that Beacon Hill, in cahoots with Barker, wrongfully 

wooed away Insight employees Cronin, McArthur, and Verduzco to Beacon Hill and then 

encouraged them to use Insight’s confidential business information to solicit Insight’s customers. 

Some of this information, customer lists for example, was alleged to be trade secrets. At least one 

of the three “pirated” employees is alleged to have accessed Insight’s computer system for the 

purpose of stealing non-public information for use on behalf of Beacon Hill.

Here, in Discovery Dispute Joint Report (“DDJR”) #1 Insight wants discovery inspired by 

an event that took place just before Verduzco quit Insight and went to Beacon Hill. According to

Insight, Verduzco came into his office after hours, accessed the computer network, and looked at 

“trade secret” information on 17 Insight clients in the Sacramento area. The court is told that 

Verduzco acknowledged his actions in deposition, but offered a plausible and benign explanation 

for it. Not surprisingly, Insight scoffs at the explanation and asserts that here is solid evidence of 

misappropriation. It created a list of 17 Sacramento customers (“Schedule A”) as well as another 

of 49 “hiring managers” (“Schedule B”). Presumably, each hiring manager worked for one of the 

17 customers.1 And, it wants everything there is to know about Beacon Hill’s involvement with 

the 17 and the 49. Here are the Requests for Production of Documents (RFPs): 

RFP 83: “Any and all emails and text messages from December 15, 2016 to the present 

between an employee of Beacon Hill’s San Francisco or Sacramento offices and a client listed on 

Schedule A.”

RFP 84: “Any and all documents from January 1, 2016 to the present pertaining to a 

meeting between an employee of Beacon Hill’s San Francisco or Sacramento offices and a client 

listed on Schedule A.”

RFP 85: “Any and all documents from January 1, 2016 to the present pertaining to 

 

1 At page 4, footnote 4 of DDJR #1 Insight, apparently mistakenly, refers to the 49 as “Insight 

Global hiring managers.”
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United States District Court

Northern District of California

revenues generated from a client listed on Schedule A.”

RFP 86: “Any and all emails and text messages from December 15, 2016 to the present 

between an employee of Beacon Hill’s San Francisco or Sacramento offices and a hiring manager 

listed on Schedule B.”

RFP 87: “Any and all documents from January 1, 2016 to the present pertaining to a 

meeting between an employee of Beacon Hill’s San Francisco or Sacramento offices and a hiring 

manager listed on Schedule B.”

RFP 88: “Any and all documents from January 1, 2016 to the present pertaining to 

revenues generated from a hiring manager listed on Schedule B.”

This court is somewhat dubious about what Insight sees as a misappropriation “smoking 

gun.” First, Insight acknowledges that there is no evidence Verduzco downloaded or printed out 

any information. Insight’s FRCP 30(b)(6) witness admitted that it had no evidence that it lost any 

customers or suffered a decline in revenue following Verduzco’s departure (see Barker Action, 

Dkt. 133, DDJR #9). Insight’s Complaint (Dkt. 1, ¶ 85) acknowledges that customers do not 

always deal solely with a single staffing agency and sometimes offer multiple agencies the 

opportunity to fill a hiring need (thus undercutting the “secretness” of the customer list).

Nevertheless, the current discovery requests about customers is not as broad as what 

Insight wanted in Barker Action DDJR #4, which sought reams of customer information without 

naming any customer. The court denied that discovery because Insight had not (could not) 

identify any actual, affected customer. Here, while not identifying an affected customer, at least it 

has named 17 customers that possibly could be affected. That’s enough to entitle it to some 

discovery.

To date, this court has ruled on eleven DDJRs in the related Barker Action. Some of those 

rulings implicate and inform the present discovery dispute. Here, Insight’s discovery requests are 

reminiscent of its document requests in DDJR #2, an approach which the court rejected as an 

“extreme example of discovery overreach,” and DDJR #4 where the court “smell[ed] another 

fishing expedition,” and DDJR #5, where the court told Insight to stop trying to get “hold of a 

mass of information, which may or may not contain information on the issues at hand, rather than 
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asking for discovery on the issues themselves.”

In this court’s opinion, RFPs 83-88 are onerously broad, seeking “all” e-mail and texts and 

“all” documents “pertaining” to meetings or revenue. RFPs # 83 and 86 want everything from 

December 15, 2016 to the present (over 15 months). RFPs # 84, 85, 87, and 88 want everything 

from January 1, 2016 (10 months before Barker was fired) to the present. Since Insight’s showing 

of trade secret misappropriation is not weighty, the discovery the court feels Insight is entitled to is 

not nearly as extensive as Insight seeks. The court will craft what it sees as fair and proportionate.

As to the Sacramento-area office of each company listed on Schedule A (a company office 

which Insight has represented was its “customer” as of December 2016), Beacon Hill shall 

produce ESI sufficient to identify the following:

1. The date when any Beacon Hill San Francisco or Sacramento office employee first

had contact with that customer;

2. The date when any Beacon Hill employee first had contact with that company at 

one or more of its other offices;

3. The date when any Beacon Hill San Francisco or Sacramento office employee first 

met with a hiring manager of the customer;

4. The date Beacon Hill first received a requisition from the customer to fill a 

temporary staffing need;

5. The date Beacon Hill first earned revenue from the customer;

6. The date Beacon Hill first received a staffing requisition from one or more other 

offices of the company;

7. The date Beacon Hill first earned revenue from one or more other offices of the 

company.

Otherwise, Insight’s request to compel the production sought in RFPs 83-88 is denied. 

Depending on Beacon Hill’s responses, the court is not necessarily ruling out further discovery on 
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this subject. Production shall take place within 30 days.

SO ORDERED.

Dated: March 29, 2018

HOWARD R. LLOYD

United States Magistrate Judge