W Holding Co. v. Chartis Insurance

300 F.R.D. 48
District Court, D. Puerto Rico·Decided February 11, 2014·No. Civil No. 11-2271 (GAG/BJM)·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinion

ORDER

BRUCE J. McGIVERIN, United States Magistrate Judge.

Before the court is a motion from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as Receiver for Westernbank (“FDIC-R”), seeking an order to compel testimony regarding Exhibit 1013, a memorandum prepared by Freddy Maldonado to W Holding Company’s (“W Holding”) Audit Committee. Docket No. 774 (“Mot.”). W Holding opposed the motion (Docket No. 809, “Opp.”), and FDIC-R replied (Docket No. 823-1, “Reply”). The motion was referred to me for disposition. Docket No. 779. For the reasons that follow, I find that Exhibit 1013 is not privileged work product, and the FDIC-R’s motion is GRANTED.

BACKGROUND

Because the document at issue relates to Westernbank’s prior cases before the court, a brief discussion of Westernbank’s recent litigation history is necessary. In the first half of 2007, Westernbank, suspecting that it had been defrauded by one of its borrowers, Inyx, Inc., decided to investigate its loan to Inyx and conduct a broader review of the loan portfolio at Westernbank’s Business Credit Division. Westernbank hired a law firm, Adsuar Muñiz Goyeo Seda & Pérez-Ochoa, P.S.C. (“AMGSP”), and an independent accounting firm, KPMG, to conduct this investigation. In July 2007, Westernbank filed suit against Inyx in this court. A few months later, W Holding’s shareholders sued directly and derivatively in two separate actions, alleging that management should have discovered the Inyx fraud and declared the loan impaired earlier than it did. In 2010, Westernbank failed and was taken into receivership by the FDIC. In this current action, the FDIC-R is suing former directors and officers of Westernbank (collectively, “D & Os”), alleging that the D & Os were negligent in the course of making certain loans, including the Inyx loan. (Docket No. 182, “Compl.”).

The document at issue, Exhibit 1013, is a memorandum dated August 22, 2008, prepared by Freddy Maldonado, former Chief Financial Officer of Westernbank, and addressed to W Holding’s Audit Committee. The memorandum is titled “Management’s Conclusion regarding the Impairment Date and Loss of the Inyx Loan and Related Restatement of Prior Period Financial Statements.” Docket No. 776-1. The memorandum’s stated purpose is “to document said facts and events related to the Inyx loan and to conclude as to the basis and the date when the loan was impaired.” Id. at 2. Management concluded that “the loan should have been classified as impaired beginning in the fourth quarter of 2005.” Id. The memorandum was prepared in part by reviewing and incorporating information from reports prepared by AMGSP and KPMG. Id. at 3. In Westernbank’s prior action against Inyx, the court held that at least one of these KPMG reports was protected by the work product privilege. See Westernbank P.R. v. Kachkar, Civ. 07-1606 (ADC/BJM), 2009 WL 530131, at *5 (D.P.R. Feb. 9, 2009).

The memorandum was presented during an August 22, 2008 meeting with the bank’s Audit Committee, which was held “for the [50] sole purpose of discussing the facts and events surrounding the Inyx Loan, to approve management’s conclusion as to the basis, the impairment date and related loss” of the loan, and “to approve the restatement of prior year financial statements.” Docket No. 776-2, at 2.

DISCUSSION

The FDIC-R seeks to compel Maldonado’s testimony regarding Exhibit 1013. W Holding objects, asserting that the memorandum is protected work product, prepared because of and for use in pending litigation. Opp. 5. The FDIC-R in response argues that because the memorandum was prepared in the ordinary course of business, not for or because of litigation, it does not constitute attorney work product prepared in anticipation of litigation. Mot. 4-5.

The work product doctrine, established in Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 67 S.Ct. 385, 91 L.Ed. 451 (1947), and codified by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(3), protects from discovery materials prepared “in anticipation of litigation” by a party or a party’s representative. However, the rule allows production of otherwise-privileged documents upon the opposing party’s showing of “substantial need” for the materials and an inability to obtain equivalent materials without “undue hardship.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(3). The rule is intended to safeguard the adversarial process by protecting a lawyer’s mental impressions, legal analysis, and conclusions from discovery by the opponent. See United States v. Nobles, 422 U.S. 225, 237-38, 95 S.Ct. 2160, 45 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975); United States v. Textron, Inc., 577 F.3d 21, 30 (1st Cir.2009). But the doctrine recognizes the practical realities of litigation, that lawyers sometimes require non-legal assistance in preparing their eases, and thus the rule extends to materials prepared by non-lawyers so long as they are “prepared in anticipation of litigation or for trial” by a party or its representative. Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(b)(3)(A); Nobles, 422 U.S. at 238-39, 95 S.Ct. 2160.

In the case of dual purpose documents—documents that serve both a litigation and business purpose—work product protection applies “if, ‘in light of the nature of the document and the factual situation in the particular case, the document can be fairly said to have been prepared or obtained because of the prospect of litigation.’” Maine v. U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, 298 F.3d 60, 68 (1st Cir.2002) (citing United States v. Adlman, 134 F.3d 1194, 1202 (2d Cir.1998)) (original emphasis). Litigation does not need to be the primary purpose for which the document was created; the document simply has to be prepared because of litigation or the prospect of litigation. Maine, 298 F.3d at 68 (rejecting the “primary purpose” test of the Fifth Circuit, which requires that a document be “created primarily for litigation purposes” for the privilege to apply). At the same time, work product protection does not attach to documents that were “prepared in the ordinary course of business or that would have been created in essentially similar form irrespective of the litigation.” Id. at 70. The rule also does not protect from discovery the underlying facts that are embodied in the work product. Resolution Trust Corp. v. Dabney, 73 F.3d 262, 266 (10th Cir.1995).

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W Holding Co. v. Chartis Insurance, 300 F.R.D. 48 (prd 2014).

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