A recent decision from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in the case of Bond v. Utreras examines the scope of discovery available from a nonparty who may have information relating to a matter. What makes the case provocative is that the party from whom discovery was sought is a blogger. Unlike the recent California Court of Appeal decision in O’Grady v. Superior Court, 139 Cal.App.4th 1423 (May 26, 2006), the Bond case does not implicate the doctrine of journalistic privilege. It does, however, demonstrate a court’s willingness to favor the confidentiality of facts obtained by one investigating a story. The court recognized and responded to the chilling effect that could occur if bloggers were routinely required by law to disclose information obtained during the investigative process.
Jamie Kalvern “fancies himself as being a voice of the people in the [Chicago housing] projects.” On the blog The View From the Ground, Kalvern published a multipart post titled “Kicking the Pigeon”, which purported to be an account of alleged misconduct by members of the Chicago Police Department. The post provided a significant amount of detail about a particular incident, and stated that it was based in part on interviews with persons having first hand knowledge.
One of the victims of the alleged misconduct filed a civil rights lawsuit against the police officers involved. During discovery, the defendants deposed Kalvern and served him with a broadly-worded subpoena duces tecum seeking, among other things, documents relating to any allegations of misconduct by police officers at the housing project where the incident is said to have taken place. Because Kelvern refused to answer certain questions at the deposition and failed to produce documents pursuant to the subpoena, the defendants moved to compel. The court denied the motion.
The court cited to the case of McKevitt v. Pallasch, 339 F.3d 530 (7th Cir. 2003) which advised that “rather than speaking of privilege, courts should simply make sure that a subpoena duces tecum directed to the media, like any other subpoena duces tecum, is reasonable in the circumstances, which is the general criterion for judicial review of subpoenas.” Because Kalvern was a nonparty, the court concluded that he should be entitled to somewhat greater protection than would a party in similar circumstances. Mere relevance of the information would not be enough to justify compelling the disclosures the defendants sought.
Although the court did not go so far as to establish a per se rule for heightened protection for journalists, it did acknowledge that Kalvern’s journalistic efforts would be undermined if he got the reputation of being one ready to disclose confidential information. That would ruin his “street cred”. Accordingly, in light of the circumstances, the court held that forcing to comply with the subpoena, and to answer the deposition questions, would be unduly burdensome.
Bond v. Utreras, No. 04-2617, (N.D.Ill., June 27, 2006).