Big Names Weigh In on Attorney-Client Privilege Issue

[usregimechange]

The Obama administration and a group of law professors and former federal judges are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a Georgia company's plea for a change in the way many appellate courts deal with questions of attorney-client privilege.

Earlier this year, a coalition of business interests and the American Bar Association filed amicus briefs joining carpet maker Mohawk Industries' argument that parties in federal cases should be allowed to immediately appeal lower court findings that the parties have waived their rights to keep key information secret under attorney-client privilege. They argue that once privileged material is produced in discovery, the consequences of disclosure cannot be undone by an appellate reversal of the trial order mandating production.

But this month, the former Mohawk employee seeking information the company claims is privileged received some high-powered help of his own. U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan filed an amicus brief supporting the former employee, plaintiff Norman Carpenter, as did the group of 19 law professors and six former federal judges that includes former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr; former Federal Bureau of Investigation director William S. Sessions; former federal judges Patricia M. Wald and Abner J. Mikva; and legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky. They argue that a Mohawk win at the Supreme Court would undermine district court judges' ability to control the discovery process.

http://www.law.com/jsp/ihc/PubArticleIHC.jsp?id=1202432597240