In re Sause Bros. Ocean Towing

144 F.R.D. 111, 1992 A.M.C. 1863, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20909, 1991 WL 407106
District Court, D. Oregon·Decided November 26, 1991·No. Civ. No. 89-609-RE·Published·Cited by 5 cases

Opinion

OPINION

REDDEN, Chief Judge:

Plaintiff Sause Brothers Ocean Towing Company (Sause Brothers) brings this limitation of liability action pursuant to the court’s admiralty jurisdiction.1 Claimant Canada seeks damages for environmental harm caused by oil spilled from a Sause Brothers vessel. Now before me are Canada’s and Sause Brothers’ cross motions for discovery. Canada moves for a protective order for return of certain documents, and Sause Brothers moves to compel production of additional documents. Canada also moves for a protective order prohibiting a deposition by Sause Brothers.

BACKGROUND

In response to document requests submitted by Sause Brothers in 1990, Canada produced three letters written by one of its attorneys, H.J. Wruck of the Canadian Department of Justice. These letters were to scientists retained by Canada to study the environmental harm caused by the spill. They include various comments and inquiries by Wruck on draft damage assessment reports prepared by the scientists. The letters were first inspected by Sause Brothers in August, 1990, and copies were produced for it sometime between then and October, 1990. Canada claims that two of the letters, those dated October 12 and November 24, 1989, are privileged counsel communications.2 Canada further claims that the letters were inadvertently disclosed to Sause Brothers; that it did not learn of the disclosure until counsel for Sause Brothers asked questions concerning the letters in a deposition on September 19 and 20, 1991; and that Canada’s counsel promptly asserted privilege at that time. Sause Brothers argues that any privileges were waived by Canada’s disclosure of the letters.

DISCUSSION

A. Canada’s Motion for Protective Order Regarding Privileged Documents

Canada moves for an order requiring Sause Brothers to return the Wruck letters because they are protected by the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine.

The federal common law of privileges governs in federal question cases. Fed.R.Evid. 501; Weil v. Investment/Indicators Research and Management, Inc., 647 F.2d 18, 24 (9th Cir.1981). The party asserting a privilege has the burden of establishing it, and doing so with respect to a given communication requires demonstrating that the privilege has not been waived. United States v. Zolin, 809 F.2d 1411, 1415 (9th Cir.1987) aff'd in part and vacated in part, 491 U.S. 554, 109 S.Ct. 2619, 105 L.Ed.2d 469 (1989); see also [114]*114Weil, 647 F.2d at 25. The requirements of waiver ordinarily differ between the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine, but there is no distinction where, as here, the alleged waiver was by a disclosure to the privilege holder’s opponent in litigation. Transamerica Computer Co. v. International Business Machines Corp., 573 F.2d 646, 647 n. 1 (9th Cir.1978); Hartford Fire Ins. Co. v. Garvey, 109 F.R.D. 323, 328 (N.D.Cal.1985).

Canada’s own briefs recognize that two fundamentally different views exist among federal courts regarding waiver of privilege through inadvertent disclosures of documents in discovery. Some courts reject the view that inadvertent disclosures can ever constitute waiver. Other courts, inclined to construe privileges more narrowly, find that inadvertent disclosures can effect waiver, and view the lack of a subjective intent to disclose as merely one factor to consider in a case-by-case waiver analysis. The former view rejecting inadvertent waiver is held by several courts outside the Ninth Circuit. See e.g. Mendenhall v. Barber-Greene Co., 531 F.Supp. 951, 955 (N.D.Ill.1982), Georgetown Manor, Inc. v. Ethan-Allen, Inc., 753 F.Supp. 936, 938 (S.D.Fla.1991) (citing Mendenhall analysis, and other cases in accord). The latter view, however, prevails in the decisions of the Ninth Circuit. See e.g. United States v. Zolin, 809 F.2d 1411, 1415 (9th Cir.1987); Weil v. Investment/Indicators Research and Management, Inc., 647 F.2d 18, 24 (9th Cir.1981); Transamerica Computer Co. v. International Business Machines, 573 F.2d 646 (9th Cir.1978). Four recent district court cases on this point within the Ninth Circuit found that inadvertent document disclosures did effect waiver. Eureka Financial Corp. v. Hartford Acci. & Indem. Co., 136 F.R.D. 179, 184 (E.D.Cal.1991); Bud Antle, Inc. v. Grow-Tech, Inc., 131 F.R.D. 179, 183-184 (N.D.Cal.1990); Richmark Corp. v. Timber Falling Consultants, Inc., 126 F.R.D. 58, 61 (D.Or.1989); Hartford Fire Ins. Co. v. Garvey, 109 F.R.D. 323, 328-32 (N.D.Cal.1985).

In support of its motion, Canada seeks to distinguish the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ unfavorable waiver decisions and analogize to the favorable cases, all the while expounding the reasoning of the courts which reject inadvertent waiver altogether. I find these efforts unpersuasive.

Canada first compares its inadvertent disclosure to one found not to have effected waiver in the Ninth Circuit’s 1978 Transamerica decision. There, the court expressly avoided deciding whether inadvertent disclosure could constitute waiver. 573 F.2d at 650. Instead the court found that defendant IBM’s inadvertent disclosure of documents in a prior case had not waived the attorney-client privilege because it had in effect been compelled. 573 F.2d at 651. The court in the prior case had ordered an extraordinarily rapid discovery schedule. IBM had been required to screen and produce 17 million pages of documents within a three month period. After reviewing IBM’s efforts to comply with this schedule, the Transamerica court concluded that “it would be disingenuous ... to say that IBM was not, in a very practical way, ‘compelled’ to produce privileged documents____” Id.

Here, Canada claims to have produced in excess of 140,000 pages of documents in response to Sause Brothers’ interrogatories and requests for production. This is far less than the 17 million involved in Transamerica, and there were no comparable time constraints imposed here. This case is not comparable to the “truly exceptional and [] unique” situation on which the Transamerica decision rested. Id.

Canada next distinguishes the facts of the Ninth Circuit’s 1981 Weil decision, where waiver was found. The distinction is well taken. The critical disclosure in Weil was not through documents, but rather deposition testimony, and there was evidence there of a more genuinely voluntary waiver. It was in Weil, however, that the Ninth Circuit first clearly rejected the view that inadvertent disclosures cannot constitute waiver. 647 F.2d at 24; see also Hartford,

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In re Sause Bros. Ocean Towing, 144 F.R.D. 111, 1992 A.M.C. 1863, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20909, 1991 WL 407106 (D. Or. 1991).

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