Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 273

112 

MOHAWK  INDUSTRIES,  INC.  v.  CARPENTER 

Opinion of the Court 

U. S.  323,  328  (1940);  see  also  Wright  &  Miller  § 3914.23,  at 
140–155. 

These  established  mechanisms  for  appellate  review  not 
only  provide  assurances  to  clients  and  counsel  about  the  se­
curity  of  their  conﬁdential  communications;  they  also  go  a 
long  way  toward  addressing  Mohawk’s  concern  that,  absent 
collateral  order  appeals  of  adverse  attorney-client  privilege 
rulings,  some  litigants  may  experience  severe  hardship. 
Mohawk is no doubt right that an order to disclose privileged 
material  may,  in  some  situations,  have  implications  beyond 
the  case  at  hand.  But  the  same  can  be  said  about  many 
categories  of  pretrial  discovery  orders  for  which  collateral 
order  appeals  are  unavailable.  As  with  these  other  orders, 
rulings  adverse  to  the  privilege  vary  in  their  signiﬁcance; 
some  may  be  momentous,  but  others  are  more  mundane. 
Section  1292(b)  appeals,  mandamus,  and  appeals  from  con­
tempt  citations  facilitate  immediate  review  of  some  of  the 
more consequential attorney-client privilege rulings.  More­
over,  protective  orders  are  available  to  limit  the  spillover 
effects  of  disclosing  sensitive  information.  That  a  fraction 
of orders adverse to the attorney-client privilege may never­
theless  harm  individual  litigants  in  ways  that  are  “only  im­
perfectly  reparable”  does  not  justify  making  all  such  orders 
immediately  appealable  as  of  right  under  § 1291.  Digital 
Equipment, 511 U. S., at 872. 

In short,  the limited beneﬁts  of applying “the  blunt, cate­
gorical  instrument  of  § 1291  collateral  order  appeal”  to 
privilege-related  disclosure  orders  simply  cannot  justify  the 
likely institutional costs.  Id., at 883.  Permitting parties to 
undertake  successive,  piecemeal  appeals  of  all  adverse 
attorney-client  rulings  would  unduly  delay  the  resolution  of 
district  court  litigation  and  needlessly  burden  the  courts  of 
appeals.  See  Wright  &  Miller  § 3914.23,  at  123  (“Routine 
appeal from disputed discovery orders would disrupt the or­
derly progress of the litigation, swamp the courts of appeals, 
and  substantially  reduce  the  district  court’s  ability  to  con­