Opinion ID: 2973422
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Privilege Log

Text: Finally, Lexicon argues that the district court should not have ruled on Safeco’s motion for summary judgment before it ruled on Lexicon’s motion to strike Safeco’s privilege log. As a general rule, a district court should rule on discovery motions prior to granting summary judgment. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 250 n.5 (1986) (“[W]here the nonmoving party has not had the opportunity to discover information that is essential [to its position, summary judgment should be denied].”). If the settlement issue is not dispositive of the case, we agree that the court should dispose of the privilege issue before ruling on Safeco’s motion for summary judgment as some of the documents could very well have helped Lexicon’s theory of the case. See id. The court in this case ordered Safeco to submit both a privilege log and the privileged documents to the court for in camera review, and Safeco provided both the log and the documents to a magistrate judge. J.A. at 911, 914-15. Lexicon filed its motion to strike the privilege log before the magistrate judge in this case ruled on Safeco’s assertion of privilege. Id. at 915. Presumably, because the magistrate judge did not rule on whether the documents in question were privileged before the district court granted summary judgment to Safeco, a ruling has never been made on Safeco’s assertion of privilege with respect to those documents. Because the court has the documents in question, it may be able to rule on the assertion of privilege regardless of whether the privilege log provides sufficient information to Lexicon. 7 Both the January and the March letters to Icon include claims for all costs Icon owed Lexicon at the time, but the August settlement means that some of those claims are likely no longer at issue. Without further explanation, or a detailed parsing of the record, a fact-finder would have difficulty separating out the settled claims from the non-settled claims. No. 04-6086 Lexicon, Inc. v. Safeco Ins. Co. of America, Inc. Page 10 Under the precedent cited above, however, the district court should wait to grant summary judgment until a decision is made with respect to whether the documents are privileged. Thus, although Lexicon’s motion was not well-fashioned, the principle underlying its motion is sound. Thus, unless the case is disposed of on the settlement issue, the court should rule on the privilege claim before granting summary judgment.