Horton v. United States

204 F.R.D. 670, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 234, 2002 WL 24561
CourtDistrict Court, D. Colorado
DecidedJanuary 3, 2002
DocketNo. Civ.A.00-D-2126
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 204 F.R.D. 670 (Horton v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Colorado primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Horton v. United States, 204 F.R.D. 670, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 234, 2002 WL 24561 (D. Colo. 2002).

Opinion

ORDER

BOLAND, United States Magistrate Judge.

This matter is before me on five discovery issues raised in the Plaintiffs’ Status Report Regarding December 10, 2001 Conference, filed November 27, 2001, which I have construed as a motion to compel discovery (the “Motion to Compel”). I held a hearing on the Motion to Compel on December 10, 2001, during which I took some matters under advisement and made some rulings on the record. The rulings made during the December 10, 2001, hearing are incorporated here.

I entered oral rulings disposing of three of the discovery issues — (1) granting the request of the United States for the plaintiffs property tax records from 1996 to the present; (2) granting in part and denying in part the request of the United States for the plaintiffs’ “mortgage documents;” and (3) granting the request of the United States for copies of offers to purchase parcels of real property which are the subject of this suit.

I took two matters under advisement. First, the United States requests a privilege log of the correspondence between Dunmire Property Management (“Dunmire”) and the Hannon Law Firm, LLC, which was withheld by Dunmire from production. In addition, the United States seeks an order allowing it to conduct ex parte interviews of some of Dunmire’s employees.

FACTS

This ease is brought by Robert C. Horton and Joan V. Mollohan, individually and as purported class representatives, and by Coolidge Evergreen Equities, LLC (“Coolidge Evergreen”), against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The plaintiffs assert claims of negligence, trespass, nuisance, and unjust enrichment based on the alleged release by the United States of contaminants at the former Lowry Air Force Base. Coolidge Evergreen owns real property which it claims was contaminated by the alleged releases.

In the normal course of discovery, the United States served a subpoena to produce on Dunmire. Request # 13 of the subpoena seeks “[a]ll correspondence, documentation, and other written or electronic materials sent by the Hannon Law Firm to Dunmire Property Management, Inc., or sent by Dunmire Property Management, Inc., to the Hannon Law Firm.” The Hannon Law Firm responded on behalf of Dunmire, stating that “we are treating your Rule 45 subpoena as a request for production under Rule 34----” In addition, the Hannon Law Firm, on behalf of Dunmire, responded to Request # 13 by objecting to the request as seeking “information protected by the attorney/client and attorney work product privileges.”

Dunmire is not a party to this litigation in its own right. It is, however, the “managing agent for Coolidge Evergreen Equities, LLC, with respect to the Evergreen Village Apartments located at 1950 Trenton and 1955 Ulster.” Affidavit of Crystal Dunmire. Coolidge Evergreen is one of the plaintiffs, and the Hannon Law Firm claims that it represents Dunmire in Dunmire’s capacity as managing agent of Coolidge Evergreen’s property-

ANALYSIS OF DISCOVERY DISPUTES 1. The Dunmire Privilege Log

The Motion to Compel seeks only an order requiring Dunmire to itemize on a privilege log the documents it has refused to produce [672]*672to the United States; it does not seek production of those documents at this time. During the hearing on the motion, however, it became apparent that the issue between Dunmire and the United States is more fundamental. The United States disputes the existence of an attorney-client relationship between the Hannon Law Firm and Dun-mire.

The Motion to Compel, insofar as it relates to the withheld documents, raises three issues. The first is whether Dunmire can assert the attorney-client privilege at all, since it is represented by the Hannon Law Firm only in its capacity as managing agent for Coolidge Evergreen.

Under similar facts, the court in In re Bieter Co., 16 F.3d 929 (8th Cir.1994), held that the attorney-client privilege may extend to protect communications between the lawyers for a company and the company’s independent contractor who is the “functional equivalent of an employee,” reasoning:

“The [attorney-client] privilege recognizes that sound legal advice or advocacy serves public ends and that such advice or advocacy depends upon the lawyer being fully informed by the client____ ‘The lawyer-client privilege rests on the need for the advocate and counselor to know all that relates to the client’s reasons for seeking representation if the professional mission is to be carried out.’” Such information will, in the vast majority of cases, be available from the client or the client’s employees, but there undoubtedly are situations ... in which too narrow a definition of “representative of the client” will lead to attorneys not being able to confer confidentially with nonemployees who, due to their relationship to the client, possess the very sort of information that the privilege envisions flowing most freely. “[I]t is only natural that,” just as “[m]iddle-level — and indeed lower-level — employees ... would have the relevant information needed by corporate counsel if he is adequately to advise the client with respect to ... actual or potential difficulties,” so too would non-employees who possess a “significant relationship to the [client] and the [client’s involvement in the transaction that is the subject of legal services.”

Id. at pp. 937-38 (internal citations omitted). Accord In re Copper Market Antitrust Litigation, 200 F.R.D. 213, 218-19 (S.D.N.Y.2001) (holding that a public relations firm hired as an independent contractor by one of the defendants to deal with public relations problems associated with claims asserted in the litigation could “fairly be equated with the [defendant] for purposes of analyzing the availability of the attorney-client privilege to protect communications to which [the public relations firm] was a party concerning its scandal-related duties”).

Before application of the attorney-client privilege will be extended to non-employees, however, the party asserting the privilege must make a detailed factual showing that the non-employee is the functional equivalent of an employee and that the information sought from the non-employee would be subject to the attorney-client privilege if he were an employee of the party. Energy Capital Corp. v. United States, 45 Fed.Cl. 481, 488-94 (2000); see Spahn, Thomas E., A Practitioner’s Guide to the Attorney-Client Privilege and the Work Product Doctrine, ¶ 2.404(A)(1)(d) at n. 85 (2001).

In support of its argument that the attorney-client privilege between Coolidge Evergreen and the Hannon Law Firm extends also to communications between the Hannon Law Firm and Dunmire, I have been provided with the Property Management Agreement between Coolidge Evergreen and Dunmire. That agreement does not address directly Dunmire’s management of the claims asserted in this lawsuit on behalf of Coolidge Evergreen. Rather, it provides generally that Dunmire is Coolidge Evergreen’s agent to “rent, lease, operate and manage the property.” A property manager does not necessarily have authority to manage litigation on behalf of its principal, however, and nothing in the Property Management Agreement persuades me that Coolidge Evergreen’s confidential relationship with its lawyers should be extended to Dunmire.

I also have been provided with a copy of a letter from Coolidge Evergreen to Dun-[673]

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
204 F.R.D. 670, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 234, 2002 WL 24561, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/horton-v-united-states-cod-2002.