Agrawal v. Musk, 3:24-cv-01304

Plaintiffs, including Parag Agrawal, filed an ERISA action against Elon Musk and others, alleging they were terminated without cause to deprive them of employment benefits.
The case is before the Northern District of California, Judge Laurel Beeler presiding, and currently involves discovery disputes.
Plaintiffs argue Musk's cellphone may contain relevant electronically stored information (ESI) about his alleged bias and intent in termination decisions.
Defendants claimed all relevant ESI on Musk’s phone is limited to text messages and objected to broad search terms citing privacy and business sensitivity concerns.
Parties also disputed the mutual exchange and negotiation of search terms and hit reports for identifying responsive ESI.
The court’s order addresses two discovery letter briefs: one by plaintiffs requesting expanded search terms on Musk’s phone and clarification of ESI preservation, and one by defendants regarding plaintiffs’ own ESI search disclosures.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Musk must clarify and confirm what ESI exists on his phone and when he began preserving it	Musk should confirm scope and preservation of all relevant ESI	Representations already made; only texts relevant	Denied—court accepts Musk's representation
Whether Musk’s phone should be searched using 100 plaintiff-proposed Boolean terms	Proposed terms needed to locate bias and intent evidence	Terms are overbroad, irrelevant, and cause privacy concerns	Granted—search with plaintiffs’ 100 terms as ordered
Whether plaintiffs must provide ESI custodians, search terms, and hit reports to defendants	Plaintiffs did not refuse; need more time to respond	Plaintiffs refused to disclose or negotiate search processes	Denied—dispute not ripe as negotiations are ongoing
Whether burden/expense outweighs benefit of requested discovery	Low burden, highly relevant to claims	Terms capture irrelevant/unrelated data	Ordered as proportional and relevant to needs of case

Shoen v. Shoen, 5 F.3d 1289 (9th Cir. 1993) (describing broad and liberal scope of pretrial discovery)