The common interest doctrine can sometimes protect as privileged communications between separately represented clients. But litigants seeking the doctrine’s protection face many hurdles and often fail....more
On numerous occasions, this Blog has examined the attorney-client privilege and the attorney work product doctrine.1 Today, we take another opportunity to explore the contours of these privileges....more
Unlike the very fragile attorney-client privilege (which can be waived even by disclosure to family members), the more robust work product doctrine protection survives disclosure to friendly third parties....more
Twin Willows, LLC v. Pritzkur, C.A. No. 2020-0199-PWG (Del. Ch. Feb. 28, 2022) - This decision involved a Master in Chancery applying well-settled rules on the attorney-client privilege, common interest, and work product...more
Two recent decisions from Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware address common-interest and attorney work-product protection issues that arose in the bankruptcy...more
Last week's Privilege Point described a court's somewhat surprisingly narrow view of when counterparties reasonably anticipate litigation. Lawson v. Spirit AeroSystems, Inc., Case No. 18-1100-EFM-ADM, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS...more
In Washington Coalition for Open Government v. Pierce County, No. 50718-8-II, 2019 Wash. App. LEXIS 392 (Wash. Ct. App. Feb. 20, 2019), the court properly rejected plaintiffs' attempt to apply the common interest doctrine to...more
Recently, the District of Delaware held that a there was no work-product protection, and no common legal interest protection covering communications and documents shared between a patent owner and a third-party litigation...more
The Federal Circuit reinforced limits on its own jurisdiction by rejecting an appeal brought by intervenor Anthony Levandowski in the much-publicized case Waymo LLC v. Uber Technologies, Inc., et al., No. 17-cv-00939-WHA...more
In Allied v. OSMI, the Circuit affirms dismissal of a declaratory judgment action even though Allied’s Mexican distributors had been sued in Mexico on a corresponding Mexican patent. In a first Waymo v. Uber case, the panel...more
Why would any lawyer think that his Joint Defense Agreement, entered into with a co-defendant, was protected from production by the attorney-client privilege? Well, the lawyer for one of the Defendants In AP Atlantic, Inc.,...more
A California Magistrate Judge in BofI Federal Bank v. Erhart ruled that a whistleblower’s attorney’s communications sent to federal regulators were protected by the attorney work product doctrine. No. 15-cv-2353 (S.D. Cal....more
On July 27, 2016, the United States District Court for South Carolina ordered an insurer to turn over its privileged communications. The Court explained that the insurer waived the protections afforded under the...more
With litigants' increasing reliance on litigation funders, courts have had to wrestle with privilege and work product issues, including whether litigants and their litigation funders share a "common interest" allowing the...more
Addressing a novel issue in In re: International Oil Trading Company, LLC, 548 B.R. 825 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. 2016), the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida recently denied in part an involuntary...more
The common interest doctrine can allow separately represented clients to share attorney-client privileged communications without waiving that very fragile protection. In contrast to privilege-protected documents, work product...more
On November 10, 2015, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued an opinion reaffirming that the attorney-client privilege and work product protections were not waived by a businessman and his company when they...more
The Second Circuit held last week that a borrower did not waive the attorney-client privilege by providing documents to a consortium of lender banks that shared a common legal interest with the borrower in the tax treatment...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently ruled that the “common interest” doctrine protects legal and tax liability analysis prepared for a client and subsequently shared with a consortium of banks providing...more
In This Issue: - Attorney-Client Privilege/Work Product Decisions: ..Decisions Protecting Against Disclosure ..Decisions Ordering Disclosure Other - Spoliation Decisions: ..Spoliation Sanctions...more
Consider for a moment a situation when an Owner and a General Contractor want to exchange confidential communications relating to a potential legal matter. When the Owner and Contractor are not both parties in a suit, what...more
A federal district court recently held that an insurer waived any claim of attorney-client or work product privilege when it disclosed otherwise potentially privileged information to its reinsurers and to its broker. In doing...more
Last month, a federal court in Iowa handed down a decision holding that neither work product nor attorney-client nor the common interest doctrine shield legal advice and analysis from production in discovery once it has been...more
On July 21, 2014, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued its opinion in O'Boyle v. Borough of Longport, 94 A.3d 299 (N.J. 2014), adopting a broad application of the common interest doctrine for communications covered by both the...more
In a discovery dispute between insurer Progressive and the FDIC, as receiver of the insured bank, a federal district court has rejected all claims of attorney-client privilege and work product protection to reinsurance...more