Manning v. Buchan

357 F. Supp. 2d 1036, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24734, 2004 WL 3119020
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedDecember 3, 2004
Docket02 C 372
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 357 F. Supp. 2d 1036 (Manning v. Buchan) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Manning v. Buchan, 357 F. Supp. 2d 1036, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24734, 2004 WL 3119020 (N.D. Ill. 2004).

Opinion

*1039 MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

KENNELLY, District Judge.

In this Memorandum Opinion, the Court rules on a number of disputed matters preliminary to the trial of the case, set to begin on Monday, December 6, 2004.

A. Plaintiffs fourth motion to compel

1.Defendants asserted the attorney-client and work product privileges with regard to documents in the files of the United States Attorney’s Office regarding dealings with Thomas Dye. The defendants have provided a privilege log containing forty items. 1 The defendants relied on the approval of Assistant United States Attorney Canella Henrichs in support of a defense of qualified immunity with regard to Manning’s claim his Sixth Amendment rights were violated by the defendants’ decision to have an informant elicit information from him. The Court accepted this defense on summary judgment.

Manning argues that by raising the immunity defense based on advice of counsel, defendants waived the privileges in them entirety. The Court rejects that argument. It is true that the attorney-client privilege is waived if the defendant asserts a defense that puts the attorney’s advice at issue. See, e.g., Garcia v. Zenith Electronics Corp., 58 F.3d 1171, 1175 (7th Cir.1995). But as a general rule, the scope of the waiver extends only to the subject matter of the communications that were made to obtain the advice. See, e.g., Motorola, Inc. v. Vosi Technologies, Inc., No. 01 C 4182, 2002 WL 1917256, *1 (N.D.Ill. Aug. 19, 2002). Defendants expressly waived the privilege with regard to the communications that the Federal Bureau of Investigation made to Henrichs in seeking her approval and allowed inquiry of Henrichs regarding the information given to her in connection with the request to approve the recording of Dye’s conversations with Manning. But they did not— either expressly or by implication' — -waive the privilege for matters unrelated to that particular request for advice.

The Court reviewed the privilege log and, at the hearing on this motion, directed the defendants to produce for in camera inspection one item from the list. Defendants have done so and have also produced it to Manning’s counsel.

2. Manning asks for production of Henrichs’ so-called “grand jury file” regarding Dye’s testimony before a federal grand jury regarding Manning. Manning contends the testimony was perjurious. Defendants have resisted production based on Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e). The Court has previously ruled on this matter. Manning has failed to show the “particularized need” required to permit disclosure of this material. See, e.g., United States v. Sells Engineering, Inc., 463 U.S. 418, 443, 103 S.Ct. 3133, 77 L.Ed.2d 743 (1983).

3. Manning’s request for any informant / cooperating witness file on Curtis Stover is denied as moot, based on the defendants’ representation that there is no such file.

4. With regard to Manning’s request for production of any Drug Enforcement Administration documents memorializing or summarizing statements given by Ronald Tyrakowski following his arrest in the summer of 1991, the Court finds that such documents were requested and that the defendants’ imposition of a limitation on its search for records to those in the hands of the United States Attorney’s Office and the FBI was, in this particular instance, *1040 unwarranted. Any such statements are to be produced forthwith, and in any event by no later than 9:00 a.m. on December 6, 2004.

B. Plaintiffs motion for leave to file amended complaint to conform legal theories to proof at trial

The Court granted summary judgment against Manning on his § 1983 claims, as he effectively abandoned them in response to defendants’ motion, making no argument to rebut defendants’ contention that they had not acted under color of law. Manning, having belatedly discovered that this leaves him without any claim other than the RICO claims on which he will be entitled to attorney’s fees if he prevails, has now moved to file a third amended complaint reasserting the § 1983 claim. This motion is misnamed. It is not truly a motion for leave to amend — the second amended complaint already included § 1983 claims. Rather, it is a motion for reconsideration. The motion is denied. Reconsideration is appropriate, generally speaking, only when the Court overlooked or misunderstood something; it is an inappropriate way of asserting arguments that were overlooked by a party to whom the arguments were then available. See, e.g., Bank of Waunakee v. Rochester Cheese Sales, Inc., 906 F.2d 1185, 1191 (7th Cir.1990); Quaker Alloy Casting Co. v. Gulfco Inds., Inc., 123 F.R.D. 282, 288 (N.D.Ill.1988).

C. Plaintiffs motion to compel production of all evidence relating to conjugal visits to Thomas Dye in the FBI offices

At a deposition taken on October 18, 2004, Thomas Dye testified that while he was a prisoner at the Metropolitan Correctional Center and working with the FBI as a cooperating witness against Manning in 1989 and the early 1990’s, he was permitted by agents Buchan and Miller to have numerous unsupervised conjugal visits in the FBI’s Chicago office. In a motion filed six weeks later (on the day after Thanksgiving, when the Court was closed, and just 10 days before trial), Manning asks the Court to order defendants to produce any and all documents relating to any such visits. The defendants deny that any such visits occurred, contending that Dye is making it up.

Manning requests production of all visitors’ logs for an unspecified period. The request is denied. The Court agrees that material reflecting such visits would be relevant if it existed. But in view of the burdensomeness of the request — it would require a monumental search for, and of, voluminous records for a long but' unspecified period of time — the Court finds that Manning waited too long to pursue the issue. To order the search to be done at this time would likely derail defendants’ trial preparation to a significant extent. The Court is unwilling to take that step on a matter that was, or reasonably should have been, obvious to Manning’s counsel at the moment Dye testified about the purported conjugal visits.

D.Plaintiffs motion to reconsider adverse ruling on Sixth Amendment claim

The Court denies Manning’s motion to reconsider the Court’s qualified immunity finding on Manning’s claim of violation of his Sixth Amendment rights. Most of Manning’s arguments in the motion were made and rejected at the time of that ruling and thus are not an appropriate subject for reconsideration.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
357 F. Supp. 2d 1036, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24734, 2004 WL 3119020, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/manning-v-buchan-ilnd-2004.