1017-00004 · Entities. Aurelius Global Media Group · Discovery/Class Action

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CALDERWOOD & HARKNESS LLP 777 South Flower Street, Suite 4200 Los Angeles, California 90017 Tel: (213) 555-7200

Fax: (213) 555-7201

www.calderwoodharkness.com

March 17, 2023

VIA EMAIL (mcastellano@inlawlaw.com)

Marco Castellano, Esq. Castellano Byrne & Salas LLP 11755 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 900 Los Angeles, CA 90025

Re: Fuentes v. Aurelius Media Americas Inc., LASC Case No. 22STCV38214 (Consolidated) — Plaintiffs' First Set of Requests for Production Nos. 38–42

C&H Matter No.: 1017-00004

Dear Mr. Castellano:

We write on behalf of our client, Aurelius Media Americas Inc. ("AMA"), in connection with the ongoing discovery dispute regarding Plaintiffs' First Set of Requests for Production, specifically Request for Production ("RFP") Nos. 38 through 42. This letter memorializes the positions AMA articulated during the telephonic meet-and-confer conference held between our respective offices on March 14, 2023, and sets forth AMA's proposed scope limitations in detail so that the parties may work toward a mutually agreeable resolution.

I. Introduction and Context

As discussed during our March 14 conference call — in which you and Sandra Higuera of Veltrano Employment Law Group PC participated on behalf of Plaintiffs, and Renata Vasquez and the undersigned participated on behalf of AMA — the parties have been unable to reach agreement regarding the scope of Plaintiffs' RFP Nos. 38 through 42. Each of these requests, as currently drafted, seeks "all documents and communications" relating to AMA's timekeeping and payroll practices, meal and rest break policies, and employee scheduling across all seven of AMA's California production facilities for the entirety of the putative class period, which Plaintiffs define as November 1, 2018 through the present.

AMA acknowledges the significance of the discovery sought by these requests to the claims and defenses in this consolidated wage-and-hour class action. AMA does not dispute that it controls the vast majority of the timekeeping, payroll, scheduling, and policy documents at issue, and AMA takes seriously its obligation to produce relevant, non-privileged documents that are responsive to properly scoped discovery requests. To that end, AMA agrees to produce meaningful, substantive discovery responsive to RFP Nos. 38 through 42, subject to reasonable proportionality and scope limitations that are consistent with Code of Civil Procedure section 2017.020 and the ESI Protocol Stipulation entered by the parties on January 13, 2023, and so-ordered by the Honorable Judge Patricia Nakamura.

The purpose of this letter is to set forth AMA's proposed limitations in a clear and transparent manner so that the parties can evaluate them, discuss any areas of disagreement, and, we hope, reach an informal resolution without the need for motion practice. AMA's proposals are made in good faith, with the objective of providing Plaintiffs with comprehensive access to the categories of documents and data most relevant to the claims at issue while avoiding the disproportionate burden and expense that would result from an unlimited production of the scope Plaintiffs have demanded.

II. Description of the Overbroad Requests

Before turning to AMA's proposed limitations, it is useful to briefly describe the scope of each of the five RFPs at issue.

RFP No. 38 requests "[a]ll DOCUMENTS and COMMUNICATIONS relating to AMA's timekeeping policies and practices, including but not limited to the implementation, operation, configuration, and modification of the NovaPay Solutions 'TimeTrack Pro' electronic timekeeping system, at all California facilities during the CLASS PERIOD." This request, as drafted, would encompass not only the formal policies and system configuration documents for TimeTrack Pro, but also every internal email, instant message, text message, and informal communication touching on timekeeping practices at any of AMA's seven California production facilities over nearly five years.

RFP No. 39 requests "[a]ll DOCUMENTS and COMMUNICATIONS relating to AMA's meal period policies, practices, and scheduling, including but not limited to the provision, denial, interruption, or waiver of meal periods for non-exempt hourly employees, at all California facilities during the CLASS PERIOD." Like RFP No. 38, this request is unlimited as to custodian and sweeps in every communication from every employee at every facility that references, even tangentially, meal periods or meal break scheduling.

RFP No. 40 requests "[a]ll DOCUMENTS and COMMUNICATIONS relating to AMA's rest period policies, practices, and scheduling, including but not limited to the provision, denial, interruption, or shortening of rest periods for non-exempt hourly employees, at all California facilities during the CLASS PERIOD." This request mirrors RFP No. 39 but for rest periods and raises the same overbreadth concerns.

RFP No. 41 requests "[a]ll DOCUMENTS and COMMUNICATIONS relating to AMA's employee scheduling practices, production schedules, call sheets, and shift assignments for non-exempt hourly employees at all California facilities during the CLASS PERIOD." This request would, if complied with literally, require the production of every production schedule, call sheet, and daily crew schedule generated by each of AMA's 14 show units over the class period — a volume of documents we estimate at approximately 18,000 scheduling documents alone, exclusive of associated communications.

RFP No. 42 requests "[a]ll DOCUMENTS and COMMUNICATIONS relating to AMA's payroll practices, wage calculations, overtime computations, and compensation for non-exempt hourly employees at all California facilities during the CLASS PERIOD." This request, as written, encompasses the entirety of AMA's payroll data, wage computation methodologies, overtime calculations, and all associated communications for every non-exempt employee across every California facility.

Taken together, these five requests — each employing the phrase "all documents and communications" without custodian or search-term limitation — would encompass communications from virtually every AMA employee across seven California production facilities and 14 active show units over a nearly five-year period. The putative class includes approximately 2,400 California-based non-exempt employees. A production of this scope is facially disproportionate to the needs of this case and would impose extraordinary burden and expense on AMA, as detailed further in Section IX below. Accordingly, AMA proposes the following reasonable limitations.

III. Proportionality Framework

AMA's proposed limitations are grounded in the proportionality requirements of California law. Code of Civil Procedure section 2017.020 provides that a court shall limit the scope of discovery if it determines that "the burden, expense, or intrusiveness of that discovery clearly outweighs the likelihood that the information sought will lead to the discovery of admissible evidence." The statute directs courts to consider, among other factors, the importance of the issues at stake in the litigation, the amount in controversy, the parties' relative access to the information sought, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.

These proportionality principles were reinforced by the California Supreme Court in Williams v. Superior Court (2017) 3 Cal.5th 531, 549, which held that even in class action litigation, discovery must be proportional to the needs of the case and that trial courts retain broad discretion to fashion discovery limits that balance the competing interests of full disclosure and proportionality. The Williams court emphasized that "the burden of the proposed discovery" must be weighed against "the likelihood that the information sought will lead to the discovery of admissible evidence," and that a requesting party cannot justify unlimited discovery merely by invoking the breadth of the class claims. Id. at 549–50.

AMA recognizes that, as the employer-defendant in this wage-and-hour class action, it controls the relevant timekeeping and payroll data and bears a responsibility to produce meaningful, substantive discovery. AMA does not seek to avoid its discovery obligations. Rather, the limitations proposed below are designed to balance Plaintiffs' legitimate discovery needs — including full access to the core data sets (timekeeping records, payroll data, and policies) — against the proportionality constraints imposed by law. AMA's proposals are narrowly tailored to capture the categories of documents and communications most likely to yield relevant, admissible evidence while avoiding the disproportionate burden of an unlimited, all-custodian, all-facility, all-period production.

IV. Proposed Limitation 1 — Custodian Limitation

AMA proposes that the production of email and other electronic communications responsive to RFP Nos. 38 through 42 be limited to documents from the mailboxes and files of the seven custodians identified in the parties' ESI Protocol Stipulation dated January 13, 2023. Those custodians are:

1. Lorraine Okafor, Senior Vice President, Human Resources — As AMA's most senior HR executive, Ms. Okafor has oversight responsibility for all human resources functions across AMA's California operations, including the development and implementation of meal and rest break policies, employee complaint investigations, and compliance with California wage-and-hour law.

2. Gregory Tanaka, Vice President, Legal & Compliance — Mr. Tanaka serves as AMA's in-house counsel responsible for labor and employment compliance matters, including the evaluation and revision of timekeeping policies and the legal review of the TimeTrack Pro auto-deduction configuration.

3. Marcus Yee, Director of Client Data Services, NovaPay Solutions Inc. — Mr. Yee is a third-party custodian at NovaPay Solutions Inc., the vendor that developed, implemented, and maintains the TimeTrack Pro electronic timekeeping system used by AMA. Mr. Yee was the primary NovaPay contact responsible for configuring the auto-deduction functionality at issue in this litigation.

4. Jonathan Mercer, President — Mr. Mercer is AMA's President and the most senior operational executive with knowledge of company-wide timekeeping and scheduling directives.

5. Celine Arroyo, Director of Production Operations — Ms. Arroyo oversees day-to-day production operations across AMA's California facilities, including crew scheduling, call sheet generation, and production workflow management.

6. Dwayne Prescott, Vice President of Unscripted Programming — Mr. Prescott is responsible for programming decisions that directly affect production schedules, shooting timetables, and crew deployment across AMA's unscripted television show units.

7. Karen Fong, Payroll Manager — Ms. Fong manages AMA's payroll operations for all California-based employees, including wage calculations, overtime computations, and the issuance of wage statements.

These seven custodians were identified through a collaborative process during the negotiation of the ESI Protocol Stipulation, and both parties agreed at that time that these individuals collectively represent the key decision-makers and knowledge holders regarding AMA's timekeeping policies, payroll practices, meal and rest break implementation, production scheduling, and HR oversight. Their communications are reasonably likely to contain the substantive discussions, policy decisions, implementation directives, and compliance analyses most relevant to the claims at issue.

By contrast, Plaintiffs' requests, as drafted, seek "all documents and communications" from "any AMA employee" — a formulation that would encompass the email accounts, text messages, and other electronic communications of approximately 2,400 California-based non-exempt employees across seven facilities. Collecting, processing, hosting, and reviewing the email and communications of 2,400 additional custodians would require the processing of potentially millions of additional documents at enormous cost, without any demonstrated need for communications from rank-and-file employees beyond the seven custodians already identified. The marginal relevance of communications between, for example, two production assistants about a particular day's lunch break is vastly outweighed by the cost of collecting and reviewing those communications at scale across 2,400 custodians.

AMA remains open to considering the addition of specific custodians beyond the seven identified above if Plaintiffs can articulate a particularized need for communications from a specific individual or category of individuals. For example, if Plaintiffs can identify a particular production supervisor at a specific facility whose communications are likely to contain relevant evidence not available from the existing custodians, AMA will evaluate that request in good faith. What AMA cannot agree to, however, is an open-ended collection from every employee who worked at any California facility during the class period.

V. Proposed Limitation 2 — Time Limitation

AMA proposes limiting the production of electronically stored information responsive to RFP Nos. 38 through 42 to documents dated on or after January 1, 2019 — the date on which AMA completed its transition from manual paper timesheets to the NovaPay Solutions "TimeTrack Pro" electronic timekeeping system across all seven California facilities.

The TimeTrack Pro system, and specifically its automatic meal period deduction functionality (the "auto-deduction" feature), is at the core of Plaintiffs' class claims. The Consolidated Class Action Complaint alleges that AMA's implementation of the TimeTrack Pro auto-deduction system caused systemic violations of California Labor Code sections 226.7 and 512 by automatically deducting 30-minute meal periods from employees' recorded work time regardless of whether employees were actually provided with compliant, duty-free meal periods. Documents predating the implementation of the TimeTrack Pro system on January 1, 2019 are of limited relevance to this central theory of liability, as the pre-2019 period involved a fundamentally different timekeeping methodology (manual paper timesheets) that is not the subject of Plaintiffs' primary class allegations.

AMA recognizes, however, that certain class members — including named plaintiff Yesenia Padilla, whose employment with AMA began on January 10, 2018 — have employment that predates the January 1, 2019 TimeTrack Pro implementation. To address Plaintiffs' legitimate need for discovery regarding the pre-January 2019 period, AMA proposes the following:

(a) AMA will produce available payroll summary records from its prior payroll system (Meridian Health IT) covering the period from November 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018 for all non-exempt California employees employed during that period. These summary records include hours worked, overtime hours, gross and net pay, and deduction detail.

(b) AMA will produce all meal and rest break policies in effect at any California facility during the period from November 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018.

(c) AMA will produce all employee handbook(s) applicable to non-exempt California employees during the period from November 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018, including any amendments or revisions to such handbooks.

With respect to pre-2019 paper timesheets, AMA notes that these records are maintained in offsite archival storage at Pemberton Software (Account No. AMA-CA-0847, Facility: 1525 East Warner Avenue, Santa Ana, CA 92705). Retrieval, scanning, and review of these paper records would require a manual process at significant cost. AMA estimates that the pre-2019 paper timesheets for the approximately 1,100 non-exempt employees who were employed between November 1, 2018 and December 31, 2018 would comprise approximately 40 to 50 banker's boxes of records. AMA will produce these paper timesheets only if Plaintiffs can demonstrate a specific need for individual-level time records from the pre-January 2019 period that cannot be satisfied by the summary payroll records and policies offered above.

AMA believes this approach strikes a reasonable balance. It provides full production of electronically stored information from the January 1, 2019 implementation of the TimeTrack Pro system forward — covering the period most relevant to Plaintiffs' central class claims — while also providing summary payroll data and applicable policies for the limited pre-2019 portion of the class period.

VI. Proposed Limitation 3 — Search Term Limitation

AMA proposes that email and other electronic communications collected from the seven agreed-upon custodians be identified and produced using agreed-upon search terms, consistent with the framework established in the ESI Protocol Stipulation. The use of search terms is a widely accepted, proportional methodology for identifying responsive electronically stored information, and the ESI Protocol Stipulation expressly contemplates that the parties will confer and agree upon search terms to be applied to custodial email collections.

AMA has developed a proposed search term list, which is attached hereto as Exhibit A, and which we summarize below by category. AMA has endeavored to draft these search terms broadly enough to capture the full universe of responsive communications while avoiding terms so generic (e.g., "time," "pay," "break") that they would generate an unmanageable volume of false-positive results. The proposed search terms are as follows:

Meal Period Terms:

"meal break" OR "meal period" OR "lunch break" OR "auto-deduction" OR "auto deduction" OR "missed meal" OR "meal attestation" OR "meal premium" OR "30-minute break" OR "meal waiver"

Rest Period Terms:

"rest break" OR "rest period" OR "10-minute break" OR "missed rest"

Timekeeping Terms:

"TimeTrack" OR "TimeTrack Pro" OR "NovaPay" OR "time clock" OR "punch in" OR "punch out" OR "clock in" OR "clock out" OR "time record" OR "timekeeping"

Overtime and Off-the-Clock Terms:

"overtime" OR "OT" OR "off the clock" OR "off-the-clock" OR "pre-shift" OR "post-shift" OR "setup time" OR "wrap time"

Scheduling Terms:

"call sheet" OR "call time" OR "production schedule" OR "daily schedule" OR "shoot schedule" OR "crew schedule"

Wage and Payroll Terms:

"wage statement" OR "pay stub" OR "payroll" OR "wage order" OR "Wage Order 12" OR "meal premium" OR "rest premium" OR "penalty"

AMA invites Plaintiffs to propose additional or alternative search terms. AMA is willing to engage in an iterative process to refine the search term list to ensure that it captures responsive documents as comprehensively as possible. If Plaintiffs believe that additional terms are necessary to capture a particular category of responsive communications, AMA will evaluate those proposals in good faith and, where appropriate, agree to their inclusion.

This search term approach is consistent with proportionality principles and is designed to capture the universe of relevant communications without requiring a page-by-page, document-by-document review of every email in every custodian's mailbox over the entire class period. Application of the proposed search terms to the seven custodians' email collections is estimated to yield approximately 42,000 to 55,000 email documents for review, a volume that AMA believes is proportional and manageable.

VII. Structured Data Production (Non-Email Documents)

Separately from the email and communication production described in Sections IV through VI above, AMA confirms its willingness to produce the following categories of structured data and non-email documents responsive to RFP Nos. 38 through 42 without the application of the search term limitation. These categories represent the core documentary evidence relevant to Plaintiffs' class claims and will be produced in full or in representative form, as indicated:

TimeTrack Pro Data. AMA will produce a full and complete production of all timekeeping records from the NovaPay Solutions TimeTrack Pro system for all non-exempt California employees for the class period. This production will include, for each employee, daily punch-in and punch-out records, auto-deduction records (including the timestamp and duration of each automatic meal period deduction), and Missed Meal Attestation ("MMA") records (including the employee's response to the MMA prompt and any associated supervisor override data). As you are aware, this data has also been requested via the third-party subpoena for business records issued to NovaPay Solutions Inc. on February 8, 2023, pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 2020.410. AMA will coordinate with NovaPay Solutions to ensure that the production from the third-party subpoena and AMA's own production are consistent and non-duplicative.

Payroll Records. AMA will produce complete payroll summary data for all non-exempt California employees for the class period, including hours worked (regular and overtime), pay rates, gross and net compensation, deductions, and wage statement data. This data will be produced in a structured, usable format (CSV or Excel) to facilitate Plaintiffs' analysis.

Policies and Handbooks. AMA will produce all versions of its meal and rest break policies, employee handbooks, timekeeping policies, and timekeeping-related training materials (including slide decks, training guides, and training acknowledgment forms) in effect at any California facility during the class period. AMA will produce these documents in their entirety, without redaction (except as to privileged content, which will be logged).

Production Schedules and Call Sheets. AMA acknowledges that production schedules and call sheets are relevant to Plaintiffs' claims regarding meal and rest break scheduling and the operational constraints that Plaintiffs allege prevented employees from taking timely meal and rest breaks. However, the volume of production scheduling documents across AMA's 14 active show units over a nearly five-year class period is substantial. AMA estimates that there are approximately 18,000 individual production schedules, call sheets, and daily crew schedules in its files across the 14 show units. Production of the entirety of these documents would impose significant burden and expense and would yield a large volume of substantially similar documents.

Accordingly, AMA proposes producing a representative sample of production schedules and call sheets from each of the 14 show units. Specifically, AMA proposes producing all production schedules, call sheets, and daily crew schedules from four representative weeks per show unit per year of the class period. AMA will select these representative weeks using a random selection methodology and will provide Plaintiffs with the selection methodology in advance so that Plaintiffs may raise any objections. This approach would yield approximately 3,920 scheduling documents (14 show units × 4 weeks × approximately 5 years × approximately 14 documents per week), which AMA believes provides a robust and representative picture of AMA's scheduling practices across all show units and time periods without requiring the production and review of 18,000 documents.

If, after reviewing the representative sample, Plaintiffs believe that additional scheduling documents from a particular show unit or time period are necessary, AMA will consider such requests in good faith and will produce additional documents where a particularized need is demonstrated.

HR Complaints. AMA will produce records of the 14 formal employee complaints regarding meal and rest break issues that were received by AMA's Human Resources department during the class period. These records will include the complaint intake forms, investigation notes (to the extent non-privileged), and any resulting corrective action documentation. AMA notes that this production is limited to formal complaints processed through AMA's HR complaint system; informal, undocumented verbal complaints are not maintained in any centralized record system.

This structured data production approach provides Plaintiffs with comprehensive access to the key data sets — timekeeping records, payroll data, policies, and training materials — that form the evidentiary foundation of the class claims, while managing the volume of production scheduling documents through a reasonable and defensible sampling methodology.

VIII. Privilege

AMA will withhold from production any documents protected by the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine. Documents withheld on the basis of privilege will be identified on a privilege log that describes the date, author, recipients, and general subject matter of each withheld document in sufficient detail to permit Plaintiffs to evaluate the privilege claim, consistent with Code of Civil Procedure section 2031.240(b)(2).

AMA will produce privilege logs on a rolling basis as document production proceeds, with each privilege log delivered no later than 30 days following the production to which it relates. This rolling approach is intended to ensure that Plaintiffs receive timely privilege log information without delaying the overall production timeline.

The parties' ESI Protocol Stipulation dated January 13, 2023 includes a clawback provision for the inadvertent production of privileged materials, pursuant to Evidence Code section 912(c) and Federal Rule of Evidence 502(d) (incorporated by agreement). AMA reserves all rights under that clawback provision with respect to any privileged materials that may be inadvertently produced in connection with this or any other production in this litigation.

IX. Production Volume and E-discovery Vendor

AMA's overall document production in this matter is being managed through its e-discovery vendor, Marlowe Asset Management Litigation Technology Inc., located at 600 Anton Boulevard, Suite 900, Costa Mesa, California 92626. Marlowe Asset Management is responsible for the collection, processing, hosting, review platform administration, and production of electronically stored information on behalf of AMA.

Based on preliminary collection and processing estimates provided by Marlowe Asset Management, the current estimated total production volume under AMA's proposed limitations (seven custodians, January 1, 2019 forward, agreed-upon search terms for email, plus full structured data production and representative scheduling documents) is approximately 147,832 documents, comprising approximately 1.2 million pages. AMA believes this is a substantial and meaningful production that will provide Plaintiffs with the documentary evidence necessary to evaluate the merits of the class claims and to prepare for class certification.

By contrast, Marlowe Asset Management has estimated that compliance with Plaintiffs' requests as currently drafted — that is, collection from all approximately 2,400 California-based non-exempt employees, without search term limitation, across all seven facilities and 14 show units for the entire class period — would result in a production volume exceeding 2 million documents and would cost in excess of $500,000 in collection, processing, hosting, and first-pass review costs alone. This figure does not include the cost of attorney review for privilege and responsiveness, which would add substantially to the total. Such a cost is disproportionate to the burden it imposes given the issues in the case and the availability of the core data (timekeeping records, payroll data, and policies) through the more targeted production AMA proposes.

AMA submits that the difference between a production of approximately 147,832 documents — which includes the full universe of timekeeping data, payroll records, policies, training materials, and custodial communications from the seven key custodians identified in the ESI Protocol Stipulation — and a production of over 2 million documents at more than three times the cost does not reflect a proportional increase in the likelihood of discovering relevant, admissible evidence. Rather, the incremental documents would consist overwhelmingly of communications between non-custodial employees that are tangential to the class claims, duplicative of information available from the custodial production and structured data sets, or entirely non-responsive.

X. Request for Response and Continued Meet-and-Confer

AMA respectfully requests that Plaintiffs' counsel respond to this letter within ten (10) days — that is, by March 27, 2023 — indicating whether Plaintiffs agree to the proposed limitations set forth herein, or, if Plaintiffs disagree with any aspect of the proposed limitations, identifying with specificity the areas of disagreement and any counterproposals Plaintiffs wish to advance.

If Plaintiffs agree to the proposed limitations, AMA will commence its rolling document production within 14 days of the parties' written agreement on scope, with an anticipated first production date of no later than April 10, 2023.

If Plaintiffs disagree with any or all of the proposed limitations, AMA proposes that the parties schedule a further meet-and-confer conference call at a mutually convenient time during the week of March 27, 2023 to attempt to resolve the remaining disputes informally before either party seeks court intervention. AMA strongly prefers an informal, cooperative resolution of these discovery issues and believes that the parties can reach a reasonable accommodation through continued good-faith discussion.

AMA's proposals are made in good faith and are consistent with the proportionality requirements of Code of Civil Procedure section 2017.020, the California Supreme Court's guidance in Williams v. Superior Court, and the spirit of the ESI Protocol Stipulation entered by the parties on January 13, 2023. AMA remains committed to meeting its discovery obligations and to providing Plaintiffs with meaningful access to the documents and data necessary to litigate the claims in this case.

We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. Please do not hesitate to contact the undersigned directly at (213) 555-7238 or darcher@calderwoodharkness.com if you wish to discuss any of the foregoing.

Sincerely,

CALDERWOOD & HARKNESS LLP

By: ________

Devon Archer Senior Associate Tel: (213) 555-7238

Email: darcher@calderwoodharkness.com

cc: Sandra Higuera, Esq. (Veltrano Employment Law Group PC) (via email) Renata Vasquez, Esq. (Calderwood & Harkness LLP) (via email)

Enclosure: Exhibit A — Proposed Search Term List

EXHIBIT A

PROPOSED SEARCH TERM LIST

Fuentes v. Aurelius Media Americas Inc. LASC Case No. 22STCV38214 (Consolidated)

Applicable to Custodial Email Collections — RFP Nos. 38–42

The following search terms are proposed by Defendant Aurelius Media Americas Inc. ("AMA") for application to email and electronic communication collections from the seven custodians identified in the ESI Protocol Stipulation dated January 13, 2023. Boolean connectors and proximity operators shall be applied in accordance with the Brightmoor Health IT platform specifications utilized by Marlowe Asset Management Litigation Technology Inc.

Category 1: Meal Period Terms

Category 2: Rest Period Terms

Category 3: Timekeeping Terms

Category 4: Overtime and Off-the-Clock Terms

Category 5: Scheduling Terms

Category 6: Wage and Payroll Terms

AMA reserves the right to propose modifications to this search term list based on the results of initial testing and hit-rate analysis. Plaintiffs are invited to propose additional or alternative search terms for AMA's consideration. All search terms shall be applied on a case-insensitive basis. Terms containing quotation marks shall be run as exact phrase searches. The parties shall confer regarding the application of proximity operators, wildcard characters, and stemming as needed.

No.	Search Term
1	"meal break"
2	"meal period"
3	"lunch break"
4	"auto-deduction"
5	"auto deduction"
6	"missed meal"
7	"meal attestation"
8	"meal premium"
9	"30-minute break"
10	"meal waiver"
No.	Search Term
11	"rest break"
12	"rest period"
13	"10-minute break"
14	"missed rest"
No.	Search Term
15	"TimeTrack"
16	"TimeTrack Pro"
17	"NovaPay"
18	"time clock"
19	"punch in"
20	"punch out"
21	"clock in"
22	"clock out"

23	"time record"
24	"timekeeping"
No.	Search Term
25	"overtime"
26	"OT"
27	"off the clock"
28	"off-the-clock"
29	"pre-shift"
30	"post-shift"
31	"setup time"
32	"wrap time"
No.	Search Term
33	"call sheet"
34	"call time"
35	"production schedule"
36	"daily schedule"
37	"shoot schedule"
38	"crew schedule"
No.	Search Term
39	"wage statement"
40	"pay stub"
41	"payroll"
42	"wage order"
43	"Wage Order 12"
44	"meal premium"

45	"rest premium"
46	"penalty"

CALDERWOOD & HARKNESS LLP 777 South Flower Street, Suite 4200 Los Angeles, California 90017 Tel: (213) 555-7200
Fax: (213) 555-7201
www.calderwoodharkness.com
March 17, 2023
VIA EMAIL (mcastellano@inlawlaw.com)
Marco Castellano, Esq. Castellano Byrne & Salas LLP 11755 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 900 Los Angeles, CA 90025
Re: Fuentes v. Aurelius Media Americas Inc., LASC Case No. 22STCV38214 (Consolidated) — Plaintiffs' First Set of Requests for Production Nos. 38–42
C&H Matter No.: 1017-00004
Dear Mr. Castellano:
We write on behalf of our client, Aurelius Media Americas Inc. ("AMA"), in connection with the ongoing discovery dispute regarding Plaintiffs' First Set of Requests for Production, specifically Request for Production ("RFP") Nos. 38 through 42. This letter memorializes the positions AMA articulated during the telephonic meet-and-confer conference held between our respective offices on March 14, 2023, and sets forth AMA's proposed scope limitations in detail so that the parties may work toward a mutually agreeable resolution.
I. Introduction and Context
As discussed during our March 14 conference call — in which you and Sandra Higuera of Veltrano Employment Law Group PC participated on behalf of Plaintiffs, and Renata Vasquez and the undersigned participated on behalf of AMA — the parties have been unable to reach agreement regarding the scope of Plaintiffs' RFP Nos. 38 through 42. Each of these requests, as currently drafted, seeks "all documents and communications" relating to AMA's timekeeping and payroll practices, meal and rest break policies, and employee scheduling across all seven of AMA's California production facilities for the entirety of the putative class period, which Plaintiffs define as November 1, 2018 through the present.
AMA acknowledges the significance of the discovery sought by these requests to the claims and defenses in this consolidated wage-and-hour class action. AMA does not dispute that it controls the vast majority of the timekeeping, payroll, scheduling, and policy documents at issue, and AMA takes seriously its obligation to produce relevant, non-privileged documents that are responsive to properly scoped discovery requests. To that end, AMA agrees to produce meaningful, substantive discovery responsive to RFP Nos. 38 through 42, subject to reasonable proportionality and scope limitations that are consistent with Code of Civil Procedure section 2017.020 and the ESI Protocol Stipulation entered by the parties on January 13, 2023, and so-ordered by the Honorable Judge Patricia Nakamura.
The purpose of this letter is to set forth AMA's proposed limitations in a clear and transparent manner so that the parties can evaluate them, discuss any areas of disagreement, and, we hope, reach an informal resolution without the need for motion practice. AMA's proposals are made in good faith, with the objective of providing Plaintiffs with comprehensive access to the categories of documents and data most relevant to the claims at issue while avoiding the disproportionate burden and expense that would result from an unlimited production of the scope Plaintiffs have demanded.
II. Description of the Overbroad Requests
Before turning to AMA's proposed limitations, it is useful to briefly describe the scope of each of the five RFPs at issue.
RFP No. 38 requests "[a]ll DOCUMENTS and COMMUNICATIONS relating to AMA's timekeeping policies and practices, including but not limited to the implementation, operation, configuration, and modification of the NovaPay Solutions 'TimeTrack Pro' electronic timekeeping system, at all California facilities during the CLASS PERIOD." This request, as drafted, would encompass not only the formal policies and system configuration documents for TimeTrack Pro, but also every internal email, instant message, text message, and informal communication touching on timekeeping practices at any of AMA's seven California production facilities over nearly five years.
RFP No. 39 requests "[a]ll DOCUMENTS and COMMUNICATIONS relating to AMA's meal period policies, practices, and scheduling, including but not limited to the provision, denial, interruption, or waiver of meal periods for non-exempt hourly employees, at all California facilities during the CLASS PERIOD." Like RFP No. 38, this request is unlimited as to custodian and sweeps in every communication from every employee at every facility that references, even tangentially, meal periods or meal break scheduling.
RFP No. 40 requests "[a]ll DOCUMENTS and COMMUNICATIONS relating to AMA's rest period policies, practices, and scheduling, including but not limited to the provision, denial, interruption, or shortening of rest periods for non-exempt hourly employees, at all California facilities during the CLASS PERIOD." This request mirrors RFP No. 39 but for rest periods and raises the same overbreadth concerns.
RFP No. 41 requests "[a]ll DOCUMENTS and COMMUNICATIONS relating to AMA's employee scheduling practices, production schedules, call sheets, and shift assignments for non-exempt hourly employees at all California facilities during the CLASS PERIOD." This request would, if complied with literally, require the production of every production schedule, call sheet, and daily crew schedule generated by each of AMA's 14 show units over the class period — a volume of documents we estimate at approximately 18,000 scheduling documents alone, exclusive of associated communications.
RFP No. 42 requests "[a]ll DOCUMENTS and COMMUNICATIONS relating to AMA's payroll practices, wage calculations, overtime computations, and compensation for non-exempt hourly employees at all California facilities during the CLASS PERIOD." This request, as written, encompasses the entirety of AMA's payroll data, wage computation methodologies, overtime calculations, and all associated communications for every non-exempt employee across every California facility.
Taken together, these five requests — each employing the phrase "all documents and communications" without custodian or search-term limitation — would encompass communications from virtually every AMA employee across seven California production facilities and 14 active show units over a nearly five-year period. The putative class includes approximately 2,400 California-based non-exempt employees. A production of this scope is facially disproportionate to the needs of this case and would impose extraordinary burden and expense on AMA, as detailed further in Section IX below. Accordingly, AMA proposes the following reasonable limitations.
III. Proportionality Framework
AMA's proposed limitations are grounded in the proportionality requirements of California law. Code of Civil Procedure section 2017.020 provides that a court shall limit the scope of discovery if it determines that "the burden, expense, or intrusiveness of that discovery clearly outweighs the likelihood that the information sought will lead to the discovery of admissible evidence." The statute directs courts to consider, among other factors, the importance of the issues at stake in the litigation, the amount in controversy, the parties' relative access to the information sought, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.
These proportionality principles were reinforced by the California Supreme Court in Williams v. Superior Court (2017) 3 Cal.5th 531, 549, which held that even in class action litigation, discovery must be proportional to the needs of the case and that trial courts retain broad discretion to fashion discovery limits that balance the competing interests of full disclosure and proportionality. The Williams court emphasized that "the burden of the proposed discovery" must be weighed against "the likelihood that the information sought will lead to the discovery of admissible evidence," and that a requesting party cannot justify unlimited discovery merely by invoking the breadth of the class claims. Id. at 549–50.
AMA recognizes that, as the employer-defendant in this wage-and-hour class action, it controls the relevant timekeeping and payroll data and bears a responsibility to produce meaningful, substantive discovery. AMA does not seek to avoid its discovery obligations. Rather, the limitations proposed below are designed to balance Plaintiffs' legitimate discovery needs — including full access to the core data sets (timekeeping records, payroll data, and policies) — against the proportionality constraints imposed by law. AMA's proposals are narrowly tailored to capture the categories of documents and communications most likely to yield relevant, admissible evidence while avoiding the disproportionate burden of an unlimited, all-custodian, all-facility, all-period production.
IV. Proposed Limitation 1 — Custodian Limitation
AMA proposes that the production of email and other electronic communications responsive to RFP Nos. 38 through 42 be limited to documents from the mailboxes and files of the seven custodians identified in the parties' ESI Protocol Stipulation dated January 13, 2023. Those custodians are:
1. Lorraine Okafor, Senior Vice President, Human Resources — As AMA's most senior HR executive, Ms. Okafor has oversight responsibility for all human resources functions across AMA's California operations, including the development and implementation of meal and rest break policies, employee complaint investigations, and compliance with California wage-and-hour law.
2. Gregory Tanaka, Vice President, Legal & Compliance — Mr. Tanaka serves as AMA's in-house counsel responsible for labor and employment compliance matters, including the evaluation and revision of timekeeping policies and the legal review of the TimeTrack Pro auto-deduction configuration.
3. Marcus Yee, Director of Client Data Services, NovaPay Solutions Inc. — Mr. Yee is a third-party custodian at NovaPay Solutions Inc., the vendor that developed, implemented, and maintains the TimeTrack Pro electronic timekeeping system used by AMA. Mr. Yee was the primary NovaPay contact responsible for configuring the auto-deduction functionality at issue in this litigation.
4. Jonathan Mercer, President — Mr. Mercer is AMA's President and the most senior operational executive with knowledge of company-wide timekeeping and scheduling directives.
5. Celine Arroyo, Director of Production Operations — Ms. Arroyo oversees day-to-day production operations across AMA's California facilities, including crew scheduling, call sheet generation, and production workflow management.
6. Dwayne Prescott, Vice President of Unscripted Programming — Mr. Prescott is responsible for programming decisions that directly affect production schedules, shooting timetables, and crew deployment across AMA's unscripted television show units.
7. Karen Fong, Payroll Manager — Ms. Fong manages AMA's payroll operations for all California-based employees, including wage calculations, overtime computations, and the issuance of wage statements.
These seven custodians were identified through a collaborative process during the negotiation of the ESI Protocol Stipulation, and both parties agreed at that time that these individuals collectively represent the key decision-makers and knowledge holders regarding AMA's timekeeping policies, payroll practices, meal and rest break implementation, production scheduling, and HR oversight. Their communications are reasonably likely to contain the substantive discussions, policy decisions, implementation directives, and compliance analyses most relevant to the claims at issue.
By contrast, Plaintiffs' requests, as drafted, seek "all documents and communications" from "any AMA employee" — a formulation that would encompass the email accounts, text messages, and other electronic communications of approximately 2,400 California-based non-exempt employees across seven facilities. Collecting, processing, hosting, and reviewing the email and communications of 2,400 additional custodians would require the processing of potentially millions of additional documents at enormous cost, without any demonstrated need for communications from rank-and-file employees beyond the seven custodians already identified. The marginal relevance of communications between, for example, two production assistants about a particular day's lunch break is vastly outweighed by the cost of collecting and reviewing those communications at scale across 2,400 custodians.
AMA remains open to considering the addition of specific custodians beyond the seven identified above if Plaintiffs can articulate a particularized need for communications from a specific individual or category of individuals. For example, if Plaintiffs can identify a particular production supervisor at a specific facility whose communications are likely to contain relevant evidence not available from the existing custodians, AMA will evaluate that request in good faith. What AMA cannot agree to, however, is an open-ended collection from every employee who worked at any California facility during the class period.
V. Proposed Limitation 2 — Time Limitation
AMA proposes limiting the production of electronically stored information responsive to RFP Nos. 38 through 42 to documents dated on or after January 1, 2019 — the date on which AMA completed its transition from manual paper timesheets to the NovaPay Solutions "TimeTrack Pro" electronic timekeeping system across all seven California facilities.
The TimeTrack Pro system, and specifically its automatic meal period deduction functionality (the "auto-deduction" feature), is at the core of Plaintiffs' class claims. The Consolidated Class Action Complaint alleges that AMA's implementation of the TimeTrack Pro auto-deduction system caused systemic violations of California Labor Code sections 226.7 and 512 by automatically deducting 30-minute meal periods from employees' recorded work time regardless of whether employees were actually provided with compliant, duty-free meal periods. Documents predating the implementation of the TimeTrack Pro system on January 1, 2019 are of limited relevance to this central theory of liability, as the pre-2019 period involved a fundamentally different timekeeping methodology (manual paper timesheets) that is not the subject of Plaintiffs' primary class allegations.
AMA recognizes, however, that certain class members — including named plaintiff Yesenia Padilla, whose employment with AMA began on January 10, 2018 — have employment that predates the January 1, 2019 TimeTrack Pro implementation. To address Plaintiffs' legitimate need for discovery regarding the pre-January 2019 period, AMA proposes the following:
(a) AMA will produce available payroll summary records from its prior payroll system (Meridian Health IT) covering the period from November 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018 for all non-exempt California employees employed during that period. These summary records include hours worked, overtime hours, gross and net pay, and deduction detail.
(b) AMA will produce all meal and rest break policies in effect at any California facility during the period from November 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018.
(c) AMA will produce all employee handbook(s) applicable to non-exempt California employees during the period from November 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018, including any amendments or revisions to such handbooks.
With respect to pre-2019 paper timesheets, AMA notes that these records are maintained in offsite archival storage at Pemberton Software (Account No. AMA-CA-0847, Facility: 1525 East Warner Avenue, Santa Ana, CA 92705). Retrieval, scanning, and review of these paper records would require a manual process at significant cost. AMA estimates that the pre-2019 paper timesheets for the approximately 1,100 non-exempt employees who were employed between November 1, 2018 and December 31, 2018 would comprise approximately 40 to 50 banker's boxes of records. AMA will produce these paper timesheets only if Plaintiffs can demonstrate a specific need for individual-level time records from the pre-January 2019 period that cannot be satisfied by the summary payroll records and policies offered above.
AMA believes this approach strikes a reasonable balance. It provides full production of electronically stored information from the January 1, 2019 implementation of the TimeTrack Pro system forward — covering the period most relevant to Plaintiffs' central class claims — while also providing summary payroll data and applicable policies for the limited pre-2019 portion of the class period.
VI. Proposed Limitation 3 — Search Term Limitation
AMA proposes that email and other electronic communications collected from the seven agreed-upon custodians be identified and produced using agreed-upon search terms, consistent with the framework established in the ESI Protocol Stipulation. The use of search terms is a widely accepted, proportional methodology for identifying responsive electronically stored information, and the ESI Protocol Stipulation expressly contemplates that the parties will confer and agree upon search terms to be applied to custodial email collections.
AMA has developed a proposed search term list, which is attached hereto as Exhibit A, and which we summarize below by category. AMA has endeavored to draft these search terms broadly enough to capture the full universe of responsive communications while avoiding terms so generic (e.g., "time," "pay," "break") that they would generate an unmanageable volume of false-positive results. The proposed search terms are as follows:
Meal Period Terms:
"meal break" OR "meal period" OR "lunch break" OR "auto-deduction" OR "auto deduction" OR "missed meal" OR "meal attestation" OR "meal premium" OR "30-minute break" OR "meal waiver"
Rest Period Terms:
"rest break" OR "rest period" OR "10-minute break" OR "missed rest"
Timekeeping Terms:
"TimeTrack" OR "TimeTrack Pro" OR "NovaPay" OR "time clock" OR "punch in" OR "punch out" OR "clock in" OR "clock out" OR "time record" OR "timekeeping"
Overtime and Off-the-Clock Terms:
"overtime" OR "OT" OR "off the clock" OR "off-the-clock" OR "pre-shift" OR "post-shift" OR "setup time" OR "wrap time"
Scheduling Terms:
"call sheet" OR "call time" OR "production schedule" OR "daily schedule" OR "shoot schedule" OR "crew schedule"
Wage and Payroll Terms:
"wage statement" OR "pay stub" OR "payroll" OR "wage order" OR "Wage Order 12" OR "meal premium" OR "rest premium" OR "penalty"
AMA invites Plaintiffs to propose additional or alternative search terms. AMA is willing to engage in an iterative process to refine the search term list to ensure that it captures responsive documents as comprehensively as possible. If Plaintiffs believe that additional terms are necessary to capture a particular category of responsive communications, AMA will evaluate those proposals in good faith and, where appropriate, agree to their inclusion.
This search term approach is consistent with proportionality principles and is designed to capture the universe of relevant communications without requiring a page-by-page, document-by-document review of every email in every custodian's mailbox over the entire class period. Application of the proposed search terms to the seven custodians' email collections is estimated to yield approximately 42,000 to 55,000 email documents for review, a volume that AMA believes is proportional and manageable.
VII. Structured Data Production (Non-Email Documents)
Separately from the email and communication production described in Sections IV through VI above, AMA confirms its willingness to produce the following categories of structured data and non-email documents responsive to RFP Nos. 38 through 42 without the application of the search term limitation. These categories represent the core documentary evidence relevant to Plaintiffs' class claims and will be produced in full or in representative form, as indicated:
TimeTrack Pro Data. AMA will produce a full and complete production of all timekeeping records from the NovaPay Solutions TimeTrack Pro system for all non-exempt California employees for the class period. This production will include, for each employee, daily punch-in and punch-out records, auto-deduction records (including the timestamp and duration of each automatic meal period deduction), and Missed Meal Attestation ("MMA") records (including the employee's response to the MMA prompt and any associated supervisor override data). As you are aware, this data has also been requested via the third-party subpoena for business records issued to NovaPay Solutions Inc. on February 8, 2023, pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 2020.410. AMA will coordinate with NovaPay Solutions to ensure that the production from the third-party subpoena and AMA's own production are consistent and non-duplicative.
Payroll Records. AMA will produce complete payroll summary data for all non-exempt California employees for the class period, including hours worked (regular and overtime), pay rates, gross and net compensation, deductions, and wage statement data. This data will be produced in a structured, usable format (CSV or Excel) to facilitate Plaintiffs' analysis.
Policies and Handbooks. AMA will produce all versions of its meal and rest break policies, employee handbooks, timekeeping policies, and timekeeping-related training materials (including slide decks, training guides, and training acknowledgment forms) in effect at any California facility during the class period. AMA will produce these documents in their entirety, without redaction (except as to privileged content, which will be logged).
Production Schedules and Call Sheets. AMA acknowledges that production schedules and call sheets are relevant to Plaintiffs' claims regarding meal and rest break scheduling and the operational constraints that Plaintiffs allege prevented employees from taking timely meal and rest breaks. However, the volume of production scheduling documents across AMA's 14 active show units over a nearly five-year class period is substantial. AMA estimates that there are approximately 18,000 individual production schedules, call sheets, and daily crew schedules in its files across the 14 show units. Production of the entirety of these documents would impose significant burden and expense and would yield a large volume of substantially similar documents.
Accordingly, AMA proposes producing a representative sample of production schedules and call sheets from each of the 14 show units. Specifically, AMA proposes producing all production schedules, call sheets, and daily crew schedules from four representative weeks per show unit per year of the class period. AMA will select these representative weeks using a random selection methodology and will provide Plaintiffs with the selection methodology in advance so that Plaintiffs may raise any objections. This approach would yield approximately 3,920 scheduling documents (14 show units × 4 weeks × approximately 5 years × approximately 14 documents per week), which AMA believes provides a robust and representative picture of AMA's scheduling practices across all show units and time periods without requiring the production and review of 18,000 documents.
If, after reviewing the representative sample, Plaintiffs believe that additional scheduling documents from a particular show unit or time period are necessary, AMA will consider such requests in good faith and will produce additional documents where a particularized need is demonstrated.
HR Complaints. AMA will produce records of the 14 formal employee complaints regarding meal and rest break issues that were received by AMA's Human Resources department during the class period. These records will include the complaint intake forms, investigation notes (to the extent non-privileged), and any resulting corrective action documentation. AMA notes that this production is limited to formal complaints processed through AMA's HR complaint system; informal, undocumented verbal complaints are not maintained in any centralized record system.
This structured data production approach provides Plaintiffs with comprehensive access to the key data sets — timekeeping records, payroll data, policies, and training materials — that form the evidentiary foundation of the class claims, while managing the volume of production scheduling documents through a reasonable and defensible sampling methodology.
VIII. Privilege
AMA will withhold from production any documents protected by the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine. Documents withheld on the basis of privilege will be identified on a privilege log that describes the date, author, recipients, and general subject matter of each withheld document in sufficient detail to permit Plaintiffs to evaluate the privilege claim, consistent with Code of Civil Procedure section 2031.240(b)(2).
AMA will produce privilege logs on a rolling basis as document production proceeds, with each privilege log delivered no later than 30 days following the production to which it relates. This rolling approach is intended to ensure that Plaintiffs receive timely privilege log information without delaying the overall production timeline.
The parties' ESI Protocol Stipulation dated January 13, 2023 includes a clawback provision for the inadvertent production of privileged materials, pursuant to Evidence Code section 912(c) and Federal Rule of Evidence 502(d) (incorporated by agreement). AMA reserves all rights under that clawback provision with respect to any privileged materials that may be inadvertently produced in connection with this or any other production in this litigation.
IX. Production Volume and E-discovery Vendor
AMA's overall document production in this matter is being managed through its e-discovery vendor, Marlowe Asset Management Litigation Technology Inc., located at 600 Anton Boulevard, Suite 900, Costa Mesa, California 92626. Marlowe Asset Management is responsible for the collection, processing, hosting, review platform administration, and production of electronically stored information on behalf of AMA.
Based on preliminary collection and processing estimates provided by Marlowe Asset Management, the current estimated total production volume under AMA's proposed limitations (seven custodians, January 1, 2019 forward, agreed-upon search terms for email, plus full structured data production and representative scheduling documents) is approximately 147,832 documents, comprising approximately 1.2 million pages. AMA believes this is a substantial and meaningful production that will provide Plaintiffs with the documentary evidence necessary to evaluate the merits of the class claims and to prepare for class certification.
By contrast, Marlowe Asset Management has estimated that compliance with Plaintiffs' requests as currently drafted — that is, collection from all approximately 2,400 California-based non-exempt employees, without search term limitation, across all seven facilities and 14 show units for the entire class period — would result in a production volume exceeding 2 million documents and would cost in excess of $500,000 in collection, processing, hosting, and first-pass review costs alone. This figure does not include the cost of attorney review for privilege and responsiveness, which would add substantially to the total. Such a cost is disproportionate to the burden it imposes given the issues in the case and the availability of the core data (timekeeping records, payroll data, and policies) through the more targeted production AMA proposes.
AMA submits that the difference between a production of approximately 147,832 documents — which includes the full universe of timekeeping data, payroll records, policies, training materials, and custodial communications from the seven key custodians identified in the ESI Protocol Stipulation — and a production of over 2 million documents at more than three times the cost does not reflect a proportional increase in the likelihood of discovering relevant, admissible evidence. Rather, the incremental documents would consist overwhelmingly of communications between non-custodial employees that are tangential to the class claims, duplicative of information available from the custodial production and structured data sets, or entirely non-responsive.
X. Request for Response and Continued Meet-and-Confer
AMA respectfully requests that Plaintiffs' counsel respond to this letter within ten (10) days — that is, by March 27, 2023 — indicating whether Plaintiffs agree to the proposed limitations set forth herein, or, if Plaintiffs disagree with any aspect of the proposed limitations, identifying with specificity the areas of disagreement and any counterproposals Plaintiffs wish to advance.
If Plaintiffs agree to the proposed limitations, AMA will commence its rolling document production within 14 days of the parties' written agreement on scope, with an anticipated first production date of no later than April 10, 2023.
If Plaintiffs disagree with any or all of the proposed limitations, AMA proposes that the parties schedule a further meet-and-confer conference call at a mutually convenient time during the week of March 27, 2023 to attempt to resolve the remaining disputes informally before either party seeks court intervention. AMA strongly prefers an informal, cooperative resolution of these discovery issues and believes that the parties can reach a reasonable accommodation through continued good-faith discussion.
AMA's proposals are made in good faith and are consistent with the proportionality requirements of Code of Civil Procedure section 2017.020, the California Supreme Court's guidance in Williams v. Superior Court, and the spirit of the ESI Protocol Stipulation entered by the parties on January 13, 2023. AMA remains committed to meeting its discovery obligations and to providing Plaintiffs with meaningful access to the documents and data necessary to litigate the claims in this case.
We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. Please do not hesitate to contact the undersigned directly at (213) 555-7238 or darcher@calderwoodharkness.com if you wish to discuss any of the foregoing.
Sincerely,
CALDERWOOD & HARKNESS LLP
By: ________
Devon Archer Senior Associate Tel: (213) 555-7238
Email: darcher@calderwoodharkness.com
cc: Sandra Higuera, Esq. (Veltrano Employment Law Group PC) (via email) Renata Vasquez, Esq. (Calderwood & Harkness LLP) (via email)
Enclosure: Exhibit A — Proposed Search Term List
EXHIBIT A
PROPOSED SEARCH TERM LIST
Fuentes v. Aurelius Media Americas Inc. LASC Case No. 22STCV38214 (Consolidated)
Applicable to Custodial Email Collections — RFP Nos. 38–42
The following search terms are proposed by Defendant Aurelius Media Americas Inc. ("AMA") for application to email and electronic communication collections from the seven custodians identified in the ESI Protocol Stipulation dated January 13, 2023. Boolean connectors and proximity operators shall be applied in accordance with the Brightmoor Health IT platform specifications utilized by Marlowe Asset Management Litigation Technology Inc.
Category 1: Meal Period Terms
Category 2: Rest Period Terms
Category 3: Timekeeping Terms
Category 4: Overtime and Off-the-Clock Terms
Category 5: Scheduling Terms
Category 6: Wage and Payroll Terms
AMA reserves the right to propose modifications to this search term list based on the results of initial testing and hit-rate analysis. Plaintiffs are invited to propose additional or alternative search terms for AMA's consideration. All search terms shall be applied on a case-insensitive basis. Terms containing quotation marks shall be run as exact phrase searches. The parties shall confer regarding the application of proximity operators, wildcard characters, and stemming as needed.
No. | Search Term
1 | "meal break"
2 | "meal period"
3 | "lunch break"
4 | "auto-deduction"
5 | "auto deduction"
6 | "missed meal"
7 | "meal attestation"
8 | "meal premium"
9 | "30-minute break"
10 | "meal waiver"
No. | Search Term
11 | "rest break"
12 | "rest period"
13 | "10-minute break"
14 | "missed rest"
No. | Search Term
15 | "TimeTrack"
16 | "TimeTrack Pro"
17 | "NovaPay"
18 | "time clock"
19 | "punch in"
20 | "punch out"
21 | "clock in"
22 | "clock out"
23 | "time record"
24 | "timekeeping"
No. | Search Term
25 | "overtime"
26 | "OT"
27 | "off the clock"
28 | "off-the-clock"
29 | "pre-shift"
30 | "post-shift"
31 | "setup time"
32 | "wrap time"
No. | Search Term
33 | "call sheet"
34 | "call time"
35 | "production schedule"
36 | "daily schedule"
37 | "shoot schedule"
38 | "crew schedule"
No. | Search Term
39 | "wage statement"
40 | "pay stub"
41 | "payroll"
42 | "wage order"
43 | "Wage Order 12"
44 | "meal premium"
45 | "rest premium"
46 | "penalty"

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CALDERWOOD & HARKNESS LLP

EXHIBIT A

PROPOSED SEARCH TERM LIST

Record

Parties

Dates

Amounts