Privilege or Work Product Protections – Page 29

Boyer v. Gildea, 2009 WL 230646 (N.D. Ind. Jan. 29, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Finding emails between trustee?s former and current counsel and an email between current counsel and a fact witness subject to protection from disclosure under the work production doctrine and noting defendant?s failure to assert substantial need or inability to obtain equivalent materials by other means, court denied defendant?s motion to compel production of the emails at issue

Nature of Case: Adversary proceeding alleging statutory violations by entering into agreement to control price of auction assets

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Fuller v. Interview, Inc., 2009 WL 3241542 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 30, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Court found no waiver of privilege where production was inadvertent, where reasonable steps were taken to protect privileged materials, where the volume of inadvertently produced material was very small (portions of a few pages out of 34,000 pages produced), and where defendants acted quickly to assert the privilege after discovering the inadvertent production

Nature of Case: Termination in violation of Family Medical Leave Act

Electronic Data Involved: Portions of privileged emails

Sajda v. Brewton, 2009 WL 4061356 (N.D. Ind. Nov. 20, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Court granted in part motion to compel documents withheld as privileged where plaintiff sought the “sideswipe report” created by defendants following the relevant accident and where the court found the report had been prepared in the ordinary course of business and was not therefore protected as privileged; as to the computer template used to generate the report, the court found ?the computer template?appears to be a regularly generated report? and thus was not subject to attorney-client or work product protection; court declined to compel production of the ?DOT Accident Register? where such production was prohibited by statute

Nature of Case: Personal injury

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Multiquip, Inc. v. Water Mgmt. Systs., LLC, 2009 WL 4261214 (D. Idaho Nov. 23, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where, as a result of the autofill function in email, defendant mistakenly sent a privileged communication to a third party which was thereafter forwarded to opposing counsel in the litigation, court undertook waiver analysis pursuant to ER 502 and found that privilege was not waived where defendant disclosed the communication inadvertently, where defendant?s reliance on ?a system that had worked in particular way in the past? was reasonable to prevent disclosure, and where defendant?s counsel took immediate steps to rectify the error upon learning of the disclosure

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged email

Casual Living Worldwide v. Lane Furniture Idus. Inc., 2009 WL 37162 (W.D. Ky. Jan. 6, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Court ordered defendant to produce email sent to a foreign supplier despite objection that email was privileged where foreign supplier did not have the required commonality of interest to preserve the privilege i.e., ?a shared legal interest? but rather, only a possible ?common business interest?namely, that the Defendant be allowed to continue to produce the alleged infringing furniture??

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Preferred Care Partners Holding Corp. v. Humana, Inc., 2009 WL 982449 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 9, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Court declined to find plaintiffs had waived privilege as to three emails where the emails were inadvertently produced (amongst a supplemental production of 10,000 documents), where plaintiffs? counsel took reasonable steps to prevent their production by conducting a pre-production privilege review and where two of the emails had been marked as privileged, and where plaintiff took reasonable steps to rectify the error by requesting the return of each email shortly after discovering its production; court found waiver as to one email where the details of the email where revealed at hearing and in a declaration and thus, the privilege was voluntarily waived

Nature of Case: Claims arising from breach of confidentiality agreement

Electronic Data Involved: Emails

Pulse Eng?g. Inc. v. Mascon, Inc., 2009 WL 3234177 (S.D. Cal. Oct. 2, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Court denied motion to compel production of redacted portions of emails where the emails were prepared in anticipation of litigation and where dissemination to third party with common legal interest did not constitute waiver pursuant to the Common Interest Doctrine (commonality of interested existed where third party was responsible for manufacturing and supplying the allegedly infringing filter)

Nature of Case: Patent infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Portions of privileged emails

Kandel v. Brother Int?l Corp., 2009 WL 5454888 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 15, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where defendants presented evidence that 110 privileged documents were produced despite extensive preventative measures, including key word searching and manual review, and where defense counsel took immediate action to identify all privileged materials that had been produced and to request plaintiff return, sequester, or destroy the documents pursuant to the parties? clawback agreement, court found that ?defendants ha[d] shown their production?was inadvertent within the meaning of?the protective order? and denied plaintiff?s motion for an order declaring 28 documents produced by defendants to be not privileged

Nature of Case: Class action

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged communications

Ayers Oil Co. v. Am. Bus. Brokers, Inc., 2009 WL 4725297 (E.D. Mo. Dec. 2, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where a party to the litigation forwarded an email from his attorney to a third party, the court ruled that the attorney-client privilege had been waived because there was no shared legal interest between the litigant and the third party and thus the common interest doctrine did not apply but held that the protection provided by the work product doctrine had not been waived where the email was forwarded to ?a nonadversary third party? and where there was no basis for finding it likely that the third party would not keep the email confidential

Electronic Data Involved: Privileged email

AHF Cmty. Dev., LLC v. City of Dallas, 2009 WL 348190 (N.D. Tex. Feb. 12, 2009)

Dec 01 2009

Key Insight: Where city inadvertently produced privileged documents due to its conversion to new software but then allowed its witness to testify regarding those documents at deposition without objection, court held privilege had been waived and declined to compel the documents? return

Nature of Case: Violations of Fair Housing Act

Electronic Data Involved: Email

Tag:Privilege or Work Product Protections