Herbalife is not entitled to a protective order that called out Bill Ackman, his Pershing Square Capital Management hedge fund and his lawyers, a California judge has ruled.
The proposed order was drafted by Herbalife and Dana Bostick, the former California distributor who is suing the company under the state’s “chain letter,” or pyramid scheme, law.
It’s common for parties to come up with protective orders that forbids sharing of confidential information obtained during discovery — but the judge balked when Herbalife went a step further and suggested a “highly confidential, lawyers’ eyes only” category for “high-risk” experts that have had anything to do with Pershing Square since 2010 or might in the next three years.
It defined a “Pershing Square person” as “any present or former directors, officers, executives, partners, principals, trustees, employees, agents, attorneys, accountants, advisors and representatives, or any other person(s) known, believed or suspected to be acting or purporting to act on its behalf, now or at any previous time since January 1, 2010, including but not limited to William Ackman and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP.”