Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 271.0

110 

MOHAWK  INDUSTRIES,  INC.  v.  CARPENTER 

Opinion of the Court 

One  reason  for  the  lack  of  a  discernible  chill  is  that,  in 
deciding how freely to speak, clients and counsel are unlikely 
to  focus  on  the  remote  prospect  of  an  erroneous  disclosure 
order, let alone on the timing of a possible appeal.  Whether 
or  not  immediate  collateral  order  appeals  are  available,  cli­
ents  and  counsel  must  account  for  the  possibility  that  they 
will later be required by law to disclose their communications 
for  a  variety  of  reasons—for  example,  because  they  mis­
judged  the  scope  of  the  privilege,  because  they  waived  the 
privilege,  or  because  their  communications  fell  within  the 
privilege’s  crime-fraud  exception.  Most  district  court  rul­
ings  on  these  matters  involve  the  routine  application  of  set­
tled  legal  principles.  They  are  unlikely  to  be  reversed  on 
appeal,  particularly  when  they  rest  on  factual  determina­
tions  for  which  appellate  deference  is  the  norm.  See,  e. g., 
Richardson-Merrell, 472 U. S., at 434 (“Most pretrial orders 
of  district  judges  are  ultimately  afﬁrmed  by  appellate 
courts”); Reise  v.  Board of  Regents, 957  F. 2d 293,  295 (CA7 
1992) (noting that “almost all interlocutory appeals from dis­
covery orders would end in afﬁrmance” because “the district 
court possesses discretion, and review is deferential”).  The 
breadth of the privilege and the narrowness of its exceptions 
will thus tend  to exert a much greater  inﬂuence on the con­
duct  of  clients  and  counsel  than  the  small  risk  that  the  law 
will be misapplied.2 

Moreover, were attorneys and clients to reﬂect upon their 
appellate  options,  they  would  ﬁnd  that  litigants  confronted 
with  a  particularly  injurious  or  novel  privilege  ruling  have 
several  potential  avenues  of  review  apart  from  collateral 
order  appeal.  First,  a  party  may  ask  the  district  court  to 
certify,  and  the  court  of  appeals  to  accept,  an  interlocutory 
appeal  pursuant  to  28  U. S. C.  § 1292(b).  The  preconditions 
for  § 1292(b)  review—“a  controlling  question  of  law,”  the 

2 Perhaps the situation would be different if district courts were system­
atically  underenforcing  the  privilege,  but  we  have  no  indication  that  this 
is the case.