Stewart Title Guaranty Co. v. Owlett & Lewis, P.C.

297 F.R.D. 232, 2013 WL 3784126, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 100396
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedJuly 18, 2013
DocketCivil No. 4:12-CV-00770
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 297 F.R.D. 232 (Stewart Title Guaranty Co. v. Owlett & Lewis, P.C.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Stewart Title Guaranty Co. v. Owlett & Lewis, P.C., 297 F.R.D. 232, 2013 WL 3784126, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 100396 (M.D. Pa. 2013).

Opinion

ORDER

SUSAN E. SCHWAB, United States Magistrate Judge.

I. Introduction.

This matter comes before the Court on defendant’s motion for an order directing the [234]*234return of documents that defendant previously produced to plaintiff but now seeks to claw back. Specifically, the defendant produced a mediation memo and a consulting expert’s report in discovery and contends that the documents are privileged and were inadvertently produced. In deciding this dispute, and in the absence of a rule applicable to the inadvertent disclosure of confidential mediation documents and a non-testifying expert report, we find Federal Rule of Evidence 502(b) applicable by analogy. F.R.E. 502(b) provides that if the producing party took reasonable steps to prevent disclosure and reasonable steps to rectify the disclosure, the producing party does not waive the attorney-client privilege or work-product protection by an inadvertent disclosure. Applying the F.R.E. 502(b) analysis, here, we conclude that, although the defendant inadvertently produced the mediation memo and expert report, the defendant waived any privilege applicable to those documents by failing to take reasonable steps either to prevent disclosure or to rectify the disclosure. Nevertheless, because the plaintiff has stated that it is willing to return the mediation memo to the defendant, we will order that the plaintiff do so. We will not, however, strike the deposition testimony that the plaintiff has already elicited based on the mediation memo and expert report. Nor will we direct the return of the expert report. And so we will grant in part and deny in part the currently pending motion for return of documents.

II. Background and Procedural History.

A. Present Complaint.

In April of 2012, the plaintiff, Stewart Title Guaranty Company, began this action against defendant, Owlett & Lewis, P.C., and, in March of 2013, Stewart Title filed an amended complaint. Stewart Title alleges the following facts in the amended complaint.

Stewart Title is a Texas corporation in the business of underwriting title insurance commitments and policies throughout the United States. Stewart Title alleges that Owlett is a Pennsylvania professional corporation and, at all relevant times, Owlett was a licensed title agent in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania performing legal services for Stewart Title including performing title searches and issuing title commitments and policies on behalf of Stewart Title. Stewart Title alleges that the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000, and it invokes this court’s diversity jurisdiction.

Stewart Title alleges that, in 1993, it entered into a retainer agreement with Owlett whereby Stewart Title retained Owlett as its attorney and appointed Owlett as its limited agent to examine titles and issue title policies covering property in Tioga County, Pennsylvania. The retainer agreement required Owlett to issue title policies according to recognized underwriting practices, the rules and instructions of Stewart Title, and the rules and regulations of the Department of Insurance. The retainer agreement also prohibited Owlett, without prior written consent, from issuing “title policies without appropriate exceptions as to liens, defects, encumbrances, and/or objection disclosed by a careful search and examination of title, or known to [Owlett] to exist” and from insuring “over a title defect, lien, or encumbrance, regardless of any indemnity or deposit that [Owlett] shall obtain.” Doc. 19 at ¶¶ 14-15. The retainer agreement also provided that Owlett generally shall be liable to Stewart Title for any loss including losses resulting from errors in abstracting, errors in examining title, and errors in closing transactions as well as losses resulting from violations of the retainer agreement and the instructions given by Stewart Title.

In December of 2010, Stewart Title and Owlet executed a termination agreement providing that, effective February 8, 2011, the retainer agreement would be of no further force and effect, but the parties agreed that any pre-existing obligations of Owlett would survive the termination of the retainer agreement.

On September 30, 2005, John and Brenda Goldian purchased property consisting of 70 acres located in Tioga County, Pennsylvania in the Marcellus Shale Formation. According to Stewart Title, during the last half of the Nineteenth Century and first half of the Twentieth Century, it was common and eus[235]*235tomary practice for property owners in this region to reserve all, or a portion, of the oil, gas, and mineral rights when conveying property or to convey or assign those rights separate from the surface rights to the property. As a result of that practice, Stewart Title alleges that many record owners of property in the region do not own all, or even a portion, of the mineral rights to their properties. While in areas outside this region, it is common practice in the title industry for title agents to do title searches going back 60 years, according to Stewart Title, title agents know, or through reasonable diligence should know, that in this region such a 60-year search would be inadequate or insufficient to uncover instruments reserving, conveying, or assigning mineral rights because such instruments were likely recorded more than 60 years ago. So, Stewart Title contends, a title agent in this region is required either to search and examine title to both the surface and the subsurface rights through the last half of the Nineteenth Century or to except mineral rights from the scope of coverage under any title insurance policy the agent issues.

Owlett performed the title work and conducted the settlement on the Goldians’ purchase of the property, but Owlett conducted only a 60-year search. Owlett issued a title insurance policy underwritten by Stewart Title to the Goldians insuring fee simple title to the property including all of the mineral rights.

In three separate transactions in 1932, the Goldians’ predecessors-in-title to the property conveyed 75% of the mineral rights to the property, and none of the subsequent purchasers of the property reacquired those mineral rights. So, when the Goldians purchased the property in 2005 they obtained only the surface rights to the property and 25% of the mineral rights. According to Stewart Title, in 2007, the Goldians, apparently unaware that they owned only 25% of the mineral rights, entered into a lease agreement with Chesapeake Appalachia LLC for the mineral rights to the property for a period of five years. Pursuant to the lease agreement, the Goldians were to receive a signing bonus of $8,902.50 as well as royalty payments for any oil or gas discovered under their property. Chesapeake, however, later discovered that the Goldians held title to only 25% of the mineral rights to the property, and as a result, Chesapeake reduced the payments under the lease to the Goldians accordingly.

Stewart Title alleges that, in May of 2008, the Goldians submitted a title claim under the policy issued by Owlett, and Stewart Title paid the Goldians $306,676.88, an amount which represents, among other things, the difference between the appraised value of the property with and without the missing mineral rights.

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297 F.R.D. 232, 2013 WL 3784126, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 100396, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/stewart-title-guaranty-co-v-owlett-lewis-pc-pamd-2013.