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Privilege
Delaware Courts Address Common Interest Doctrine Issue: Part II
McguireWoods' previous Privilege Point described a favorable Delaware state court decision finding that a post-reorganization trust and its largest stakeholder could rely on the common interest doctrine to protect their communications – because they shared a common legal rather than just a common financial interest. Highlighting the unpredictability of the common interest doctrine, another Delaware state court took a much narrower view just a few months later.
Read MoreImpact Investing’s New Role in the Age of COVID-19
The past few years have shown that corporations are responding to pressure from consumers, shareholders and government to focus on their ESG performance. ESG refers to the consideration of environmental, social and governance factors in business and investment decisions. Many corporate managers conflate ESG with socially responsible investing (SRI) and think that adhering to those principles requires sacrificing financial returns, but that view is outdated.
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Delaware Courts Address Common Interest Doctrine Issue: Part I
The common interest doctrine occasionally allows separately represented clients to share privileged communications without waiving that fragile protection. Nearly all courts require that the common interest doctrine participants share a common legal interest, rather than merely a common financial interest. McGuireWoods partner, Thomas Spahn, offers insight in his latest privilege point.
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Another Court Finds Public Relations Consultants Outside Privilege Protection
Companies dealing with the pandemic (and finding themselves in pandemic-triggered future litigation) may seek public relations consultants’ assistance. Companies and their lawyers should remember that most courts reject privilege protection for communications with such consultants, and work product protection for documents those consultants create.
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Illinois Federal Court Addresses a Substantive and a Logistical Privilege Issue: Part II
Part one of this Privilege Point addressed an Illinois federal court’s holding that the attorney-client privilege protected a company executive’s relaying of legal advice to another executive, as well as the former’s email about his intent to discuss an intellectual property matter with the company lawyer. See where McGuireWoods partner, Thomas Spahn, picks up from where he left off.
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Illinois Federal Court Addresses a Substantive and a Logistical Privilege Issue: Part I
A frequent privilege issue arising in federal and state courts involves communications that do not come from or go to a lawyer. Such communications may clearly deserve privilege protection, under certain limited circumstances.
Read MoreLitigation Holds
Are “Litigation Holds” Protected by the Privilege or the Work Product Doctrine?
With pandemic-triggered litigation predicted to increase, corporations’ lawyers undoubtedly will address the possible duty to impose “litigation holds,” which direct corporate employees to preserve pertinent documents.
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