Under what is called the "fiduciary exception," the law essentially deems a fiduciary's beneficiary to be the fiduciary’s lawyer’s actual "client." This normally enables the beneficiary to access communications between the...more
No corporate lawyer wants to get drawn into a nasty litigation between an entity’s owners. But the reality is that corporate and general counsel often find themselves unwittingly ensnared in business divorce cases. Sometimes...more
On May 23, 2022, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania held that the fiduciary exception to the attorney-client privilege and attorney work product doctrine is consistent with Pennsylvania law. This ruling was highly anticipated...more
Under old English trust law, courts gave trust beneficiaries access to otherwise privileged communications between the trust fiduciary and its lawyer advising him or her on trust administration matters. The main case bringing...more
A most basic precept of the law is the attorney-client privilege. A litigant being able to speak freely and completely with his or her counsel without the fear of the conversation being revealed has been a cornerstone of...more
A Massachusetts district court recently ordered defendants in an ERISA fiduciary breach case to produce certain communications with their in-house and outside counsel, rejecting defendants’ argument that the communications...more
A federal district court in Ohio recently attempted to shed some light on when internal communications between an ERISA plan administrator and its in-house counsel are discoverable and when they are protected by the...more
A federal district court in Ohio concluded that internal communications between a plan administrator and in-house counsel about a beneficiary’s first-level benefit claim remained protected by the attorney-client privilege,...more
In Kenny v. Pacific Inv. Mgm’t Co. LLC (W.D. Wash.), a federal judge recently ruled that a mutual fund’s independent trustees must produce certain documents that the trustees had redacted or withheld based on attorney-client...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Adding to the body of conflicting authority on the scope of the attorney-client privilege in ERISA lawsuits, a district court has found that the fiduciary exception to attorney-client privilege applies to...more
In Stock v. Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis, 2016 WL 3556655 (N.Y. App. Div. 2016), the First Judicial Department of the New York Appellate Division upheld, in a case involving a former law firm client seeking to sue the...more
The attorney-client privilege is a cornerstone of the legal practice. The privilege protects the confidentiality of communications between a client and an attorney from disclosure to a third party when the communications are...more