Maxus Liquidating Trust v. YPF (Bankr. D. Del 2021)
Key Insight: The parties had cross motions requesting the production of purportedly (attorney-client) privileged documents at the end of discovery; the Defendants had been producing documents on a categorical basis. The Court had previously issued three discovery opinions that denied the assertions of privilege by Defendant(s). Defendants failed to rebut an argument by Plaintiff (opposing party) that the documents sought were confidential, accordingly, the Court order them to be produced.
In a final argument, Defendants advocated for the requested documents being produced on a document-by-document basis. The Court rejected this given Defendants previous agreement to produce the documents on a categorical basis; the Court granted the Plaintiff’s request for the production of documents.
Considering Defendants’ Motion, the Court implied that it was hypocritical for Defendants to be seeking privileged documents from Plaintiff that were similar to the same documents that they argued against producing to Plaintiff on the basis of privilege. Regardless, the Court ordered Plaintiff to produce some the purportedly privileged documents sought by Defendant. The documents that the Court stated that Plaintiff need not produce were documents not publicly available from an investigation and the tangentially related bankruptcy case concerning Plaintiff.
Nature of Case: Adversarial Bankruptcy
Electronic Data Involved: N/A