In re Natural Gas Commodity Litigation

229 F.R.D. 82, 164 Oil & Gas Rep. 481, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14142, 2005 WL 1655241
District Court, S.D. New York·Decided July 15, 2005·No. No. 03 CIV.6186 VM AJP·Published·Cited by 3 cases

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

PECK, Chief United States Magistrate Judge.

Plaintiffs, natural gas futures traders, have moved to compel production of three privileged pages inadvertently produced in discovery by defendant AEP. (5/2/05 Plfs. Letter Br. at 14-17.) The Court previously denied plaintiffs’ motion to compel production of these and additional documents, holding that defendants AEP and Aquila’s disclosure of privileged documents to governmental agencies did not waive their work product and attorney-client privileges in this case. See In re Natural Gas Commodity Litig., 00 Civ. 6186, 2005 WL 1457666 (S.D.N.Y. June 21, 2005) (Peck, M.J.), familiarity with which is assumed.

Presently before the Court is the issue of whether AEP waived its privilege for these three privileged pages through “inadvertent production.” For the reasons set forth below, plaintiffs’ motion is DENIED.

FACTS

AEP’s Document Review and Production to Plaintiffs

On October 4, 2004, AEP served its objections to Plaintiffs’ Second Consolidated Request for Documents, objecting to, inter alia, production of any privileged documents. (5/16/05 Wolinsky Aff. (“Wolinsky Aff. I”) U 8 & Ex. 1: AEP Response to Plaintiffs’ Second Consolidated Request for Documents, “General Objections” U3.)1

To respond to plaintiffs’ Second Request for Documents, on or about October 27, 2004 AEP counsel Hogan & Hartson reviewed 140.000 pages of documents which AEP previously had produced to governmental agencies. (Wolinsky Aff. I 112.) Hogan & Hart-son determined that approximately 65,000 pages should be produced to plaintiffs. (Wolinsky Aff. I U 6; Dkt. No. 278: 5/23/05 Wolinsky Aff. (“Wolinsky Aff. II”) U 2.) These 65.000 pages were the product of two “page-by-page” document reviews by “experienced” attorneys during which Hogan & Hartson excluded from production non-responsive and/or privileged documents. (Wolinsky Aff. I 113; Wolinsky Aff. II 11112-3.) During the second document review, Hogan & Hartson also identified documents to be produced that needed to be labeled “Confidential” or [84]*84“Restricted Confidential” pursuant to the Protective Order in this case. (Wolinsky Aff. I 113.) A legal assistant made a list of all documents that were to be labeled in this manner. (Wolinsky Aff. I 115.) After the second round of document review was complete, the non-responsive and privileged documents were removed from the room in which the responsive documents were kept at Hogan & Hartson’s Washington D.C. office. (Wolinsky Aff. I 114; Wolinsky Aff. II 113.)

In November 2004, plaintiffs’ counsel conducted an initial review of the 65,000 pages of documents at the Hogan & Hartson office to determine which documents they wanted to copy for use in the litigation. (Wolinsky Aff. I H 6.) AEP and plaintiffs had agreed that AEP would not actually label any documents “Restricted Confidential” until after plaintiffs selected the documents they wanted copied. (Wolinsky Aff. I UK 5-6.)

After plaintiffs had completed their review of the documents, plaintiffs requested that all 65,000 pages be sent to an outside copy service. (Wolinsky Aff. I H 6; Wolinsky Aff. II H 3.) On November 4, 2005, AEP sent the documents to the copy service and provided the copy service with the list of documents to be labeled “Restricted Confidential.” (Wolinsky Aff. I K 6.)2

After the documents had been sent to the copy service, but before any documents were copied, Hogan & Hartson reviewed their index of categories of documents — listed by the Bates Number from AEP’s earlier production to the governmental agencies (see Wolinsky Aff. I Ex. 2) — that they had produced. (Wolinsky Aff. II 115.) Counsel’s review of the index caused it to believe that certain documents which had been made available to plaintiffs, and therefore were at the copy service, might not actually be responsive to plaintiffs’ complaint and document requests. (Wolinsky Aff. II H 5.) On November 5, 2004, one day after the documents had been delivered to the copy service, Hogan & Hartson procured the return of those potentially non-responsive documents from the copy service before any documents were copied. (Id.) Upon receipt of these returned documents, Hogan & Hartson again reviewed them and concluded that some of those documents were not responsive, and notified plaintiffs by letter dated November 12, 2004 of its withdrawal of those documents. (Wolinsky Aff. II 116.) Others of the pulled documents were determined to be responsive and were returned to the copy service. (Id.)

Under the index system used by Hogan & Hartson, when counsel reviewed the group-index of documents provided to the copy service, they could not tell that the three privileged pages at issue had been inadvertently produced and remained at the copy service. (Wolinsky Aff. II f 5.) According to Wolinsky, the three privileged pages had been “appropriately identified as privileged/protected and included on [AEP’s] privilege log but that inadvertently were allowed to remain among the 65,000 pages made available for Plaintiffs’ review and included on a list of documents to be labeled ‘Restricted Confidential.’ ” (Wolinsky Aff. II H 4.) The review of the index did not enable Hogan & Hartson to learn that the three privileged pages erroneously had been produced. (Wolinsky Aff. II KK 4-5.)

On November 12, 2004, Hogan & Hartson provided a list to plaintiffs of the documents, listed by Bates Number, that were going to be labeled “Restricted Confidential.” (Wolinsky Aff. I1117.) Hogan & Hartson had re-reviewed this list (but not the documents), but only to determine whether any of the non-responsive documents that it had with-' drawn were on it. (Id.) According to AEP attorney Robert Wolinsky, “neither that index nor other such documentation available to us allowed me or the legal assistant working with me to see that three pages of privileged/proteeted documents had inadvertently been allowed to remain among the 65,000 pages sent to the copy vendor.” (Wolinsky Aff. I11[ 5.) This newly-reviewed list of documents to be labeled “Restricted Confidential” [85]*85continued to include the three privileged pages. (Wolinsky Aff. I1118; see 5/2/05 Plfs. Letter Br. Ex. I: 11/12/04 Hogan & Hartson letter enclosing “Index of AEP Restricted Confidential Documents.”)

Two of the three privileged pages at issue are Bates numbered consecutive to the documents that AEP withdrew from the copy service as non-responsive. (Wolinsky Aff. II U 9; see 5/2/05 Plfs. Letter Br. Ex. I: 11/12/04 Letter and “Index of AEP Restricted Confidential Documents.”)3 Plaintiffs argue that because of the Bates number proximity, Hogan & Hartson should have realized the inadvertent production upon their review and re-review of the non-responsive documents and that Hogan & Hartson’s failure to do so waived the privilege. (5/2/05 Plfs. Letter Br. at 16.) AEP responds that the numbering is “purely a matter of coincidence.” (Wolinsky Aff. II U 9.) Wolinsky explains that due to the large number of documents which AEP produced to the governmental agencies and now to plaintiffs in this litigation, Hogan & Hart-son does not maintain “a detailed, page-by-page descriptive index of all the documents” but rather an “attorney work product index that provides a general description of the categories of documents in each Bates label range.”

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In re Natural Gas Commodity Litigation, 229 F.R.D. 82, 164 Oil & Gas Rep. 481, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14142, 2005 WL 1655241 (S.D.N.Y. 2005).

229 F.R.D. 82 (In re Natural Gas Commodity Litigation) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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