Western Trails, Inc. v. Camp Coast to Coast, Inc.

139 F.R.D. 4, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13914, 1991 WL 200857
CourtDistrict Court, District of Columbia
DecidedOctober 3, 1991
DocketCiv. A. No. 90-2063 (HHG/PJA)
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 139 F.R.D. 4 (Western Trails, Inc. v. Camp Coast to Coast, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, District of Columbia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Western Trails, Inc. v. Camp Coast to Coast, Inc., 139 F.R.D. 4, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13914, 1991 WL 200857 (D.D.C. 1991).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION

PATRICK J. ATTRIDGE, United States Magistrate Judge.

This is an action brought by Western Trails, Inc., the owner of a private campground resort, against Camp Coast to Coast, Inc., a corporation that arranges reciprocal visitation privileges for individual members of licensed campground resorts such as Western Trails. For an annual fee plus use fees paid to Coast to Coast for each night stayed at another resort, members of a licensed resort who have also purchased a Coast to Coast membership may visit other private resorts that are affiliated with Coast to Coast. This action arose after Coast to Coast promulgated a rule, known as the Primary Product Rule, governing the sale of Coast to Coast memberships by affiliated resorts.

The Primary Product Rule provides that no licensed resort shall offer Coast to Coast memberships to any person living greater than 250 miles from the resort for so long as (1) greater than 60% of the members of the resort live outside a radius of 250 miles from the resort and (2) during the preceding 12 months, the members of the resort visited other licensed resorts more than the resort hosted visiting members of other licensed resorts.

Western Trails alleges that Coast to Coast designed the rule in conspiracy with other licensed resorts in order to restrict price competition in the sale of resort memberships. Plaintiff’s Memorandum in Support of Motion to Compel at 6-7. Western Trails contends that Coast to Coast deliberately formulated the rule to discriminate against low-priced resorts. Plaintiff’s Memorandum in Support of Motion to Compel at 19. Coast to Coast answers that the rule was designed to prevent “free rider” situations in which a resort sells memberships to purchasers who live great distances from the resort and who have no intention of regularly using the resort, but who purchase the membership in the resort as a means to gaining inexpensive access to other licensed resorts in the Coast to Coast network. Opposition of Defendant at 5.

Western Trails seeks production of documents relating to the development, formulation and application of the Primary Product Rule. Western Trails seeks these documents in order to prove that the rule was designed to discriminate against resorts that offer resort memberships for relatively low prices. Coast to Coast has refused to produce some of these documents on the grounds that the documents are protected under the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine.1

[7]*7Western Trails has argued on three grounds that the documents withheld by Coast to Coast are not privileged. First, Western Trails argues that documents that were compiled and relied upon in drafting the Primary Product Rule are discoverable because the adoption of the rule was a business decision. Plaintiff’s Memorandum in Support of Motion to Compel at 18. Western Trails contends that documents pertaining to the operation of the rule upon the resorts is discoverable because the data contained in these documents is compiled in the ordinary course of Coast to Coast’s business. Western Trails also claims that Coast to Coast collects this data in order to administer its “Net Hosting Program,” in which it compensates resorts that host visitors from other resorts for more nights than members of the resort visit other resorts. Id. at 20.

Second, Western Trails argues that the data in these documents was not confidential because Coast to Coast intended to and did disclose the results of its calculations to licensed resorts. Id. at 21-22.

Third, Western Trails argues that Coast to Coast has waived the attorney client privilege with respect to all documents relating to the Primary Product Rule because a document known as the 1989 CACI report was inadvertently produced to Western Trails. Supplemental Memorandum in Support of Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel at 2-3. The CACI report is a tabulation of the percentage of members of each licensed resort who live inside and outside of a radius of 250 miles from the resort. Id. at 3 and Exhibit A.

In opposition to Western Trails’ motion to compel production of documents, Coast to Coast responds that the documents requested were either prepared by, or requested by and prepared for Coast to Coast’s outside general counsel, Harold Berliner, while he was “developing and opining on the legality of the ... Primary Product Rule.” Opposition of Defendant to Plaintiff’s Motion to Compel at 15. Coast to Coast asserts the attorney-client privilege maintaining that Berliner was “acting as a lawyer and not as a businessman.” Id. at 16.

In response to Western Trails’ argument that the privilege was waived by production of the CACI report, Coast to Coast contends, first, that the CACI report was privileged. Coast to Coast “does not contend that the raw data in its files (the names and addresses of CCC’s approximately 350,000 members) are privileged,” rather Coast to Coast argues that the report is privileged because it was prepared for Coast to Coast at the request of Berliner “for the purpose of assisting him in rendering legal advice.” Opposition of Defendant to Plaintiff’s Supplemental Memorandum at 5. Second, Coast to Coast argues that production of the CACI report was an inadvertent production of one document out of several thousand documents; therefore, it was not a waiver of the privilege. Id. at 6-8. Alternatively, Coast to Coast argues that even if the privilege was waived by production of the CACI report, the subject of the waiver should be limited to the CACI report itself in consideration of fairness to Coast to Coast and because the subject of the CACI report was not the Primary Product Rule. Id. at 12-13.

The Court has inspected in camera the documents that Coast to Coast claims to be privileged in order to determine whether Coast to Coast must produce these documents pursuant to Western Trails’ motion to compel.

A. Attorney-Client Privilege

The purpose of the attorney-client privilege is to promote complete and candid communication between clients and attorneys in order that attorneys may render informed, sound legal advice. Upjohn Co. [8]*8v. United States, 449 U.S. 383, 389, 101 S.Ct. 677, 682, 66 L.Ed.2d 584 (1981). The privilege rests on the premise that

if the client knows that damaging information could more readily be obtained from the attorney following disclosure than from himself in the absence of disclosure, the client would be more reluctant to confide in his lawyer and it would be difficult to obtain fully informed legal advice.

Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 403, 96 S.Ct. 1569, 1577, 48 L.Ed.2d 39 (1976). The privilege is an exception, however, to the fundamental principle that discovery should be liberal and broad in furtherance of the search for truth. E.g., Weil Ceramics & Glass Inc., v. Work, 110 F.R.D. 500, 504 (E.D.N.Y.1986). Accordingly, the privilege applies only when necessary to promote frank and open attorney-client communications; “it protects only those disclosures—necessary to obtain informed legal advice—which might not have been made absent the privilege.” Fisher, 425 U.S. at 403, 96 S.Ct. at 1577.

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Bluebook (online)
139 F.R.D. 4, 1991 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13914, 1991 WL 200857, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/western-trails-inc-v-camp-coast-to-coast-inc-dcd-1991.