One of the reasons that Stipulated Protective Orders all tend to look alike even though they are submitted to different judges and magistrates in different cases, is that Stipulated Protective Orders are available on PACER (Public Access to [Federal] Court Electronic Records), and via Westlaw and LexisNexis, among other online venues. If an order works in one case, it is likely to be used in another case, and another case, and so forth.
Another reason that SPOs look alike from case to case to case across the country is that many of these proposed Stipulated Protective Orders are written by the same counsel even though they are submitted to different courts for approval. Often, the lawyers involved represent the same clients and submit similar orders in many cases all across the United States. See, e.g., Bedivere Ins. Co. v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Kansas, Inc., No. 18-cv-02515-DDC, 2020 WL 1140394 (D. Kan. March 9, 2020). A couple of things are illustrated by the Stipulated Protective Order signed by the Magistrate Judge in what might be called the Bedivere example.
Bedivere is a civil case pending in Kansas. Attorneys of record listed on the Court's docket in this civil case list their home towns as Miami and Tampa, Florida; San Diego and Costa Mesa, California; and Chicago, in addition to, in this case, Kansas City, Missouri. There are no appearances of counsel shown on the Court's docket in this case that show any counsel from Kansas where this case is pending.
Second, the Bedivere example illustrates that the March 9, 2020 Stipulated Protective Order entered in this case in Kansas contains the same exact language leading into its provisions as many other Stipulated Protective Orders entered on this date in different federal courts around the country.
All of this takes nothing away from the quality of the representation provided by the lawyers in the Bedivere case or in any other case, for that matter. "The point is rather that writing Stipulated Protective Orders is an art with many followers."
The use of Stipulated Protective Orders in the decided cases including the Bedivere case is discussed based on the decided case law in Third-Party Cases in § 3:107, Settlement of Third Party Bad Faith Claims: Confidentiality (Protected) or Concealment (Void), in 1 DENNIS J. WALL, LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH (Thomson Reuters West, 3d Edition, forthcoming 2020 Supplement) (and from which the quotation is taken from the forthcoming 2020 Supplement). The use of Stipulated Protective Orders in First-Party Cases is, in turn, discussed based on the decided case law in First-Party Cases in § 9:28, Settlement of First Party Bad Faith Claims: Confidentiality (Protected) or Concealment (Void), in 2 id.
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