Court Opinion

ID: 9763352
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:42:37.020049+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:56:39.261621
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
The Kentucky Rules of Civil Procedure and the Kentucky Rules of Evidence specify the rules related to discovery and to the admission and exclusion of evidence. None of these rules authorize suppression of statements taken from employee witnesses by an adverse party, even if some of the employees happen to function in some type of managerial capacity. If the statements taken here from managerial employees related to factual observations rather than to matters covered by the attorney/client privilege or by the work product rule, they were not protected by CR 26.02 or any other Civil Rule. On the contrary, at this stage of this litigation we should assume that use of the statements will be confined to factual matters bearing on the plaintiffs allegations of misconduct, matters •within the scope of discovery and not privileged: that the statements will be used only as authorized by the Kentucky Rules of Evidence. We should assume that the trial court will be quite capable of using its authority to keep out privileged matters and inadmissible evidence, as the rules require, without our interceding by writ of prohibition or mandamus.
The question here is purely one of ethical violation, and the appropriate remedy. No Kentucky authority suggests disqualifying a party’s attorney and suppressing any and all use of the evidence he has obtained is an appropriate remedy in present circumstances. Certainly Rule 4.2 of the Rules of Professional Conduct, which we have adopted in SCR 3.130, does not so provide.
A lawsuit is a search for the truth, and this legal principle is too important to sacrifice to the particular ethical violation charged here. This legal principle should be the overriding consideration in deciding whether suppression of the evidence contained in the statements obtained from Shoney’s employees is the appropriate remedy for the ethical violation the Majority believes has occurred here.
We must consider very carefully in deciding when the interest at stake justifies suppressing the truth. As Justice Scott Reed so aptly put it in Nazareth Literary & Benevolent Inst. v. Stephenson, Ky., 503 S.W.2d 177 (1973), in considering questions of this nature we must first ask, “wherein the public interest lies.” When should the court craft a rule creating a privilege where none exists, a privilege which will be used to suppress evidence of the truth? The interest of justice lies in keeping such privileges few in number and carefully scrutinized, taking care to construe suppression to apply only where essential to protect some interest more important than a just determination of the pending case according to the true facts. Protecting Sho-ney’s corporate interests against statements freely given by their employees about relevant facts is not such an interest.
Elsewhere in SCR 3.130, where appropriate, as where a client insists on presenting false testimony, the duties of a lawyer in conducting the litigation are specifically provided. Here, even were we to assume that Roxanne Herr’s counsel should be disqualified in this case because he violated an ethical rule pertaining to the management of the case, certainly the remedy further provided to Shoney’s, entirely suppressing any use of *518the statements in the present litigation, is a draconian remedy. It is made up entirely of whole cloth and it serves only to prevent rather than assist in discovery of the truth.
Bender v. Eaton, Ky., 343 S.W.2d 799 (1961), cited in the Majority Opinion, does not address the present facts. It involved providing a writ of prohibition to prevent a trial court from enforcing an unauthorized order compelling discovery. Once the trial court forced the party complaining to submit to the discovery sought, the genie was out of the bottle. Here the opposite situation obtains. Discovery from Shoney’s employees has been already freely obtained; in a manner the Majority concludes unethical, but nevertheless one forbidden by no law or rule of legal procedure. The genie is already out of the bottle, and no rule authorizes suppressing factual information already obtained.
The obvious remedy of a party aggrieved by the unethical conduct of a lawyer is to complain to the Kentucky Bar Association, a complaint which, if appropriate, will be followed by punishment of the lawyer commensurate with the seriousness of his misconduct. In this case, instead of punishing the lawyer, we are punishing the client, presumably innocent of any wrongdoing in this affair. Worse yet, we are punishing the judicial process by suppressing evidence otherwise admissible in the search for the truth.
The attorney who took the statements questions whether there was really an ethical violation here. Certainly, when employed, a competent attorney investigates his Ghent’s case before filing suit to avoid, if possible, filing a frivolous lawsuit. Should communicating with Shoney’s corporate counsel about a potential claim while continuing the investigation, in itself, foreclose the right to further investigate the facts before filing suit? We seem to have so concluded in this case, painting with a broad brush where fine lines are called for. Whether there was any impropriety here, and if so, exactly what was inappropriate and what was not, is quite unclear. While the questions of impropriety raised here are matters which may be as reasons to deprive the client, Herr, of the benefit of evidence obtained in the investigation of her case. Suppressing statements counsel obtained is not justified so long as the information obtained involved neither privileged material, nor proof of deceptive, false or misleading conduct so significantly tainting the integrity of the statements as to destroy their evidentiary value.
So far as this record shows, before obtaining the statements, Herr’s counsel made appropriate disclosures to Shoney’s employees regarding his representation and the nature of the investigation. In such circumstances, as both the trial court and the Court of Appeals correctly perceived, the record presented no reason for taking the action Sho-ney’s demanded, disqualifying Herr’s lawyer and suppressing any use of the statements he obtained. The reasons for the remedy imposed here exist only in the imagination of Shoney’s counsel. Shoney’s has succeeded in using this Court to turn what is (if anything) a quarrel over ethics into a defense to this action.
STUMBO, J., joins this dissent.