Opinion ID: 217416
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Attorney-Client Privilege and Waiver

Text: The Chevron applicants' arguments, and the District Court's opinion, presuppose that the attorney-client privilege protected the material in Crude and its outtakes from disclosure, for only if there was such a protection could the disclosure of that material waive the attorney-client privilege protecting Kohn's file. [15] Thus, our initial inquiry necessarily is whether the Crude material was privileged in the first place. In order for the attorney-client privilege to attach to a communication, it must be `(1) a communication (2) made between privileged persons (3) in confidence (4) for the purpose of obtaining or providing legal assistance for the client.' In re Teleglobe Commc'ns Corp., 493 F.3d 345, 359 (3d Cir.2007) (quoting RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF THE LAW GOVERNING LAWYERS § 68 (2000)). We explained with respect to the third requirement in Teleglobe that if persons other than the client, its attorney, or their agents are present, the communication is not made in confidence, and the privilege does not attach. Id. at 361. Here, the communications captured on film clearly were not made in confidence due to the presence of the filmmakers at the time of the communications, and so the protections of the attorney-client privilege never attached to those communications. [16] In such a scenario the waiver argument advanced by the Chevron applicants is unavailing because, inasmuch as the communications were not protected by the attorney-client privilege, there was no risk of a litigant using the privilege as both a sword and a shield in an effort to gain an advantage in litigation, and thus there is no role for a court to play as arbiter of notions of fairness. [17] This case is distinguishable from our prior decision in In re Chevron Corp., 633 F.3d 153. There, the attorney-client privilege covered the communications in issue because they were made in confidence between privileged persons for the purpose of providing legal assistance. We held that by later disclosing those initially privileged communications to a third party the court-appointed expert Cabrerathe Ecuadorian plaintiffs waived any claims of attorney-client privilege as to those communications. Here, on the other hand, because the communications were not made in confidence due to the presence of the Crude filmmakers, they were not privileged to begin with, and there was no privilege to waive by their disclosure. Accordingly, there is no justification for finding any waiver of the attorney-client privilege for Kohn's communications relating to the Lago Agrio litigation on the basis of disclosures made during the filming of Crude and its outtakes, even if those disclosures were selective, given that the communications disclosed were not privileged when made. For that reason, we are constrained to reverse the District Court's December 20, 2010 order granting the Chevron applicants' application for discovery pursuant to section 1782. [18] Because we will reverse the Court's order granting the applications, it is not necessary for us to address most of the other issues the parties raise on this appeal, including the applicability of the community-of-interest doctrine, [19] and we decline to offer our views with respect to those issues as they would be mere obiter dictum.