Opinion ID: 2518470
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Implied Waiver of Attorney-Client Privilege

Text: Courts have found implied waiver of the attorney-client privilege when a defendant places the allegedly privileged communication at issue in the litigation, because any other rule would enable the client to use as a sword the protection which is awarded him as a shield. Mountain States Tel. & Tel. Co. v. DiFede, 780 P.2d 533, 544 (Colo.1989) ( quoting Cerney v. Paxton & Gallagher Co., 83 Neb. 88, 92, 119 N.W. 14, 16 (1908)). Implied waiver may occur when the defendant raises a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel as to any communications relevant to the defendant's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. Bittaker v. Woodford, 331 F.3d 715, 720 (9th Cir.2003). As the Bittaker court observed, implied waiver in these circumstances is comparable to a situation where the trial court gives the holder of the privilege a choice: If you want to litigate this claim, then you must waive your privilege to the extent necessary to give your opponent a fair opportunity to defend against it. Id. (calling this concept the fairness principle). We agree with the Bittaker court that finding an implied waiver is necessary to ensure compliance with the fairness principle. Id. at 728. Thus, the trial court must enter appropriate orders clearly delineating the contours of the limited waiver before the privilege holder discloses communications which would be privileged attorney-client communications but for the privilege holder's assertion of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. Id. Here, the prosecution asserts that Madera impliedly waived his attorney-client privilege by seeking to withdraw his guilty plea on grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel. We reject the prosecution's broad assertion that Madera has waived his privileges entirely. See Id. at 720 (the court must impose a waiver no broader than needed to ensure the fairness of the proceedings before it). Rather than endorsing a blanket waiver, we have adopted the following three-prong test for implied waiver of the attorney-client privilege which asks whether: (1) assertion of the privilege was a result of some affirmative act, such as filing suit, by the asserting party; (2) through this affirmative act, the asserting party put the protected information at issue by making it relevant to the case; and (3) application of the privilege would have denied the opposing party access to information vital to his defense. Mountain States Tel., 780 P.2d at 543-44 ( quoting League v. Vanice, 221 Neb. 34, 44, 374 N.W.2d 849, 856 (1985)). We turn now to the claims asserted in the case before us.