Resident Advisory Board v. Rizzo

97 F.R.D. 749, 37 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 412, 13 Fed. R. Serv. 1129, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16830
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedMay 20, 1983
DocketCiv.A.No. 71-1575
StatusPublished
Cited by28 cases

This text of 97 F.R.D. 749 (Resident Advisory Board v. Rizzo) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Resident Advisory Board v. Rizzo, 97 F.R.D. 749, 37 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 412, 13 Fed. R. Serv. 1129, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16830 (E.D. Pa. 1983).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM

RAYMOND J. BRODERICK, District Judge.

Before the Court are four motions of plaintiff-intervenor A & R Development Corp./The Waterford Group, Inc. (A & R) to compel discovery against defendant Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). A & R seeks the production of twenty-nine documents withheld by HUD. HUD has asserted an “administrative deliberation” privilege with respect to five of the documents, the work product privilege with respect to nineteen, and both privileges with respect to the remaining five. HUD has responded to A & R’s motion to compel production of the documents, has listed the documents for which it asserts the privilege, and has included summaries of some of these documents. A & R has also moved to compel the deposition testimony of three individuals: John Knapp, general counsel of HUD; Alfred Marcks, deputy area office manager of HUD; and Thomas Maloney, former regional administrator of HUD. During their depositions, these three individuals were instructed by HUD’s counsel not to testify concerning several of the documents to which HUD has asserted a privilege, and concerning several meetings and decisions with respect to the Whitman development. These instructions were also based on the administrative deliberation and work-product privileges.

HUD has not responded to the motions to compel deposition testimony, nor has HUD responded to a motion that these motions be granted as uncontested. Nevertheless, since the same privileges have been asserted with respect to the deposition testimony as with respect to the documents, and since the deposition testimony sought to be compelled is in large part concerned with these documents, the Court will treat all of A & R’s motions as contested, and not grant the deposition motions as uncontested pursuant to Local Rule 20(c) of this Court.

The “administrative deliberation” privilege asserted by HUD, which can also be termed a predecisional or deliberative process privilege, Coastal States Gas Corp. v. Department of Energy, 617 F.2d 854, 866 (D.C.Cir.1980), rests on the policy of protecting “advisory opinions, recommendations, and deliberations comprising part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated.” The purpose of the privilege is to prevent injury to the quality of agency decisions which could result from premature or indiscriminate disclosure of such deliberations. National Labor Relations Board v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U.S. 132, 150, 95 S.Ct. 1504, 1516, 44 L.Ed.2d 29 (1975); Conoco Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice, 687 F.2d 724, 727 (3d Cir.1982). Only predecisional communications are privileged; communications “made after the decision and designed to explain it are not.” 421 U.S. at 151, 95 S.Ct. at 1517. The work-product privilege is applicable to government attorneys in litigation. 421 U.S. at 154, 95 S.Ct. at 1518. This privilege protects primarily the attor[752]*752ney’s “mental impressions, conclusions, opinions or legal theories,” and is intended to aid the adversary process by allowing attorneys to work with a certain degree of privacy, assembling information, sifting facts, and preparing legal theories and strategy without undue and needless interference by opposing parties and their counsel. The privilege also comports with basic ideas of fairness by preventing a party, without a proper showing, from obtaining the benefits of his adversary’s trial preparation efforts. Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 510-11, 67 S.Ct. 385, 393, 91 L.Ed. 451 (1947).

Neither the predecisional deliberative process privilege nor the work-product privilege is absolute, and each can be overcome if the party seeking discovery shows sufficient need for the otherwise privileged material. Hickman, 329 U.S. at 511, 67 S.Ct. at 393; Smith v. Federal Trade Commission, 403 F.Supp. 1000, 1015 (D.Del. 1975); Exxon Corp. v. Department of Energy, 91 F.R.D. 26, 43 (N.D.Tex.1981). Since these privileges obstruct the search for truth, and since their benefits are “at best indirect and speculative” they must be strictly confined “within the narrowest possible limits consistent with the logic of [their] principles.” In re Grand Jury Proceedings, 599 F.2d 1224, 1228, 1235 (3d Cir. 1979); See Coastal States Gas Corp. v. DOE, 617 F.2d at 868; Exxon Corp. v. DOE, 91 F.R.D. at 43. The Court must, therefore, assure that these privileges are not applied “in a manner which will impede the search for truth in circumstances where the policies underlying these privileges will not be served.” In re Grand Jury Proceedings, 557 F.Supp. 1053, 1055 (E.D.Pa.1983).

The Court agrees with A & R’s contention that HUD has not properly asserted the predecisional deliberative process privilege. Indeed, although HUD has argued the applicability of this privilege to the discovery sought by A & R, HUD has not responded in any way to A & R’s contention that HUD’s manner of invoking the privilege is, in this case, defective, and has made no attempt to cure these defects. To assert the privilege, three requirements must be satisfied. First, “there must be a formal claim of privilege, lodged by the head of the department which has control over the matter, after actual personal consideration by that officer.” United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1, 7-8, 73 S.Ct. 528, 532, 97 L.Ed. 727 (1953). This requirement has apparently been imposed in every case involving this privilege, and in no case has assertion by the litigation attorney for the government been held adequate. See United States v. O'Neill, 619 F.2d 222, 225-26 (3d Cir.1980); Mobil Oil Corp. v. Department of Energy, 520 F.Supp. 414, 416 (D.N.Y.1981); United States v. American Telephone & Telegraph, 86 F.R.D. 603, 605-08 (D.D.C.1979). As stated in Pierson v. United States, 428 F.Supp. 384, 395 (D.Del.1977):

[T]he judgment of attorneys engaged in litigation is very likely to be affected by their interest in the outcome of the case.... It is of the greatest importance that the privilege be invoked only when policies it seeks to encourage are seriously threatened. Requiring the agency head to review the documents sought and to claim the privilege where appropriate is the most effective method available to assure consistency and prudence.

There is no indication in the present case that the predecisional deliberative process privilege has been asserted by anyone other than the attorneys representing HUD in this phase of the litigation. At the depositions of the various HUD officials, the privilege appears to have been asserted at the instigation of HUD’s attorneys, and not by the officials themselves. Certainly, there is no indication in the record that these officials personally reviewed the evidentiary material in question and made a determination that the

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Bluebook (online)
97 F.R.D. 749, 37 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 412, 13 Fed. R. Serv. 1129, 1983 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16830, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/resident-advisory-board-v-rizzo-paed-1983.