In Linet Americas, Inc. v. Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc., 2024 WL 3425795 (N.D. Ill. Jul. 15, 2024), the court held that “attachments to attorney client communications may be withheld as privileged without an independent basis for...more
Every court seems to require litigants to log documents they withhold based on privilege or work product claims. Perhaps not surprisingly, hardly any log goes unchallenged by the adversary. Most of these disputes eventually...more
In many cases, clients tend to place their trust, and often their livelihood, in the hands of their attorney. This expectation can be easily traced back to the attorney-client privilege, one of the oldest common-law...more
[Editor’s Note: This article was first published May 15, 2024 and EDRM is grateful to Tom Paskowitz and Robert Keeling of our Trusted Partner, Sidley, for permission to republish. The opinions and positions are those of the...more
Last week’s Privilege Point described one court’s incredible requirement that litigants identify everyone who learned of a withheld document’s content — even if they were not shown as a recipient....more
Every week, the Array team reviews the latest news and analysis about the evolving field of eDiscovery to bring you the topics and trends you need to know. This week’s post covers the week of April 1-7. Here’s what’s...more
In Kyle Rayome v. ABT Electronics, 2024 WL 1435098 (N.D. Ill. 2024), the court wrote that it “would prefer this case not go to the dark place where attorneys on one side demand that the attorneys on the other side provide...more
In Episode 131 of Case of the Week, CEO and Founder of eDiscovery Assistant, Kelly Twigger, discusses how the failure to produce a privilege log for withheld documents resulted in a waiver of privilege and sanctions under...more
January is a time to set goals and ponder what the new year will bring. It is also a time to think about what happened last year. In the world of litigation, it is important for lawyers and eDiscovery professionals to take...more
[Editor’s Note: This article has been republished with permission. It was originally published November 9, 2023 on the eDiscovery Assistant Blog] This week’s decision comes to us from the case titled 6340 NB LLC v. Cap. One,...more
It seems obvious that corporations do not waive privilege protection by disclosing privileged communications to their own board members. But what about outside board members receiving such communications where they work or...more
The difficulty of handling privilege disputes can be especially pronounced in cases involving a prolonged discovery period and large corporate defendants with different document custodians. When a party chooses to withhold...more
Attorney-client privilege protection depends on content, and some work product claims also depend in part on content. Because a litigant's privilege log obviously does not disclose withheld documents' content, the adversary...more
In earlier times, litigants essentially trusted each other to withhold (without identifying) responsive documents protected by the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine. Now every court seems to require a...more
Former President Donald J. Trump filed a motion to appoint a Special Master to review the material seized by the FBI from Mar-A-Lago. The stated purpose of the review by the Special Master is to remove nonrelevant and...more
Parties to a lawsuit often find themselves on the "same side of the courtroom" as other entities or individuals. In these instances, where a party is one of multiple (or many) co-plaintiffs or co-defendants, it is often...more
Because privilege logs necessarily contain logistical but not content-based information about withheld documents, adversaries sometimes challenge privilege protection because no lawyer sent or received a withheld document....more
The Fifth Circuit recently reversed a district court’s dismissal of a motion to return property after the government’s seizure of protected attorney-client information in Harbor Healthcare Sys., L.P. v. United States, 5 F.4th...more
Paying attention to the right facts, processes, methods, and tools when asserting attorney-client privilege will help avoid mishaps like these. Discovery in litigation or investigations invariably leads to concerns over...more
Looking beyond the keyword list paradigm as AI and analytics take the stage - In a 2012 True North blog post, one of our H5 experts provided some practical advice on reducing privilege review burdens and costs by...more
“But in-house counsel was copied on the email, isn’t that enough?” When a business faces the prospect of producing documents in litigation, determining which documents are protected by the attorney-client privilege and...more
One widespread misperception about attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine assertions is that the Federal Rules require a privilege log. As one court bluntly put it, "no where in Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 26(b)(5) is it...more
A recent decision from the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals highlights that the Board will demand sufficiently detailed privilege logs from both agency and contractor litigants. Contractors and agencies must prepare...more
Although the Federal Rules do not explicitly require privilege logs, every court seems to do so. Most courts require such logs to include predictable data, but some courts require logs to provide data that seem largely...more
Rule 26(b)(5) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that, when a party withholds information otherwise discoverable by claiming the information is privileged or subject to protection as trial-preparation material,...more