Court Opinion

ID: 9755897
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:58:34.199815+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:12.746813
License: Public Domain

Heher, J.
(dissenting). The accommodation of competing public interests is an historic function and responsibility of the judiciary. For more than three centuries it has been deemed a fundamental maxim that “the public has a right of every man’s evidence”; the public “has a right to all the assistance of every individual,” to use the words of Lord Hardwicke in the debate in 1742 on a bill to pardon in advance such witnesses as should criminate themselves in testifying to the frauds of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Oxford. Wigmore on Evidence (3d ed.), section 2192. Said Tilghman, C. J., in Baird v. Cochran, 4 Serg. & R., Pa., 397, 400 (1818):
*413“From the nature of society, it would seem that every man is bound to declare the truth when called upon in a court of justice. * * * The general welfare will be best promoted by considering the disclosure of truth as a debt which every man owes his neighbor, which he is bound to pay when called on, and which in his turn he is entitled to receive.”
It is “as ranch the duty and interest of every citizen to aid in prosecuting crime as it is to aid in subduing any domestic or foreign enemy; and it is equally the interest and duty of every citizen to aid in furnishing to all, high and low, rich and poor, every facility for a fair and impartial trial when accused; for none is exempt from liability to accusation and trial.” Israel v. State, 8 Ind. 467 (Sup. Ct. 1856).
Yet this rule has its exceptions, grounded in overriding considerations of public policy. Against testimonial duty and compulsion, for a full disclosure in the interest of truth and essential justice, is the privilege accorded communications between attorney and client. This privilege is of the very essence of a relation of trust and confidence that, while not made the subject of express constitutional protection, is yet interrelated with the specific constitutional guaranties of the individual’s right of counsel and security against self-crimination.
This is the oldest of the privileges for confidential communications, going hack to the reign of Elizabeth, where it stood unquestioned; and, since the testimony of witnesses (as we know it) did not become a common source of proof in jury trials till the early 1500’s, and testimonial compulsion did not materialize until the early part of Elizabeth’s reign, the privilege came into being, said Dean Wigmore, “as a natural exception to the then novel right of testimonial compulsion.” Wigmore, section 2290. While the ground of exclusion in those early days was consideration for “the oath and the honor” of the attorney, rather than for the apprehensions of his client, and the privilege does not now have express constitutional sanction, the attorney is by common consent, for the protection of his client, “under a solemn pledge of secrecy, not less binding because it is implied and *414seldom expressed.” Wigmore, sections 2286, 2290. “The first duty of an attorney is to keep the secrets of his clients.” Taylor v. Blacklow, 3 Bing. N. C. 249 (1836). In the late 1700’s the “point of honor” doctrine was repudiated as not a just ground for interference with the judicial search for truth, and the attorney’s exemption from testimonial disclosure was justified and enlarged out of a sense of necessity to provide subjectively for the client’s freedom of apprehension in consulting his legal advisor, assured by removing the risk of disclosure by the attorney even at the hands of the law. And so, said Lord Eldon, what at the outset was regarded as the attorney’s privilege came to be “the privilege of the client and the public.” Wright v. Mayer, 6 Ves. Jr. 281 (1801). The exemption is grounded in a “substantial individual interest” which outweighs the “public interest in the search for truth.” Compare United States v. Bryan, 339 U. S. 323, 70 S. Ct. 724, 94 L. Ed. 884 (1950). There are differences between the old theory and the new which are not pertinent to this inquiry. Vide Wigmore on Evidence (3d ed.), section 2290.
Thus, the policy of the privilege is to promote freedom of consultation of legal advisors by clients by removing the apprehension of compulsory disclosure by the legal advisors; and hence the law prohibits such disclosure save on the client’s consent. Wigmore, section 2291. The foundation of the rule “is out of regard to the interests of justice, which cannot be upholden, and to the administration of justice, which cannot go on without the aid of men- skilled in jurisprudence, in the practice of the courts, and in those matters affecting rights and obligations which form the subject of all judicial proceedings.” Greenough v. Gaskell, 1 Myl. & K. 98, 103 (1833). Without secrecy of communication there cannot be the “unrestricted and unbounded confidence in the professional agent” which is indispensible to the administration of justice. Anderson v. Bank, L. R. 2 Ch. D. 644, 649 (Jessel, M. R., 1876). The privilege is vain if it does not secure freedom of professional consultation. Unless the confidence be inviolable, there will of necessity be restraints *415upon communication working grievous injury and injustice. There is no greater trust than counseling the uninformed in the law. And the privilege is not confined to communications in aid of litigation begun or contemplated. Wigmore, section 2294. Such is the nature of this privilege against testimonial disclosure.
But it goes without saying that there is no privilege covering an abuse of the relation. In re Stein, 1 N. J. 228 (1949). The privilege against testimonial compulsion is ex necessitate contained by the essential reason and spirit of the policy, and is proof against perversion to an unlawful use. It does not avail to protect the client “in concerting with the attorney a crime or other evil enterprise”; this for the “logically sufficient reason that no such enterprise falls within the just scope of the relation between legal adviser and client”; delineating the boundaries of the limitation is not without difficulty, but the reasons of policy which underlie the privilege “all cease to operate at a certain point, namely, where the desired advice refers not to prior wrongdoing, but to future wrongdoing. Erom that point onwards, no protection is called for by any of these considerations.” Wigmore, section 2298. The inquiry is whether there was advice as to future wrongdoing as contrasted with past acts.
Such is the essence of the holding of Cardozo, J. in Clark v. United States, 289 U. S. 1, 53 S. Ct. 465, 77 L. Ed. 993 (1933), that a client “who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud will have no help from the law,” and a “mere charge of illegality, not supported by anj evidence,” is not enough, but to “drive the privilege away, there must be Something to give colour to the charge/ there must be rprima facie evidence that it has some foundation in fact/ ” and the “seal of secrecy is broken” only when “that evidence is supplied.”
This is the rationale of the rule approved by the American Law Institute in its Model Code of Evidence. There can be no privilege against disclosure if there is sufficient evidence, apart from the communication, to warrant a finding that the legal service was “sought or obtained in order to enable *416or aid the client to commit or to plan to commit a crime or a tort.” Rule 212. It is shown by the comment to the rule that the intention was to adopt the philosophy expounded by Justice Cardozo in the cited case of Clark v. United States, that no social policy can be said to justify a privilege against disclosure of a “confidential communication” between lawyer and client “to secure legal advice to enable the client to commit a crime or a tort, or to assist him in so doing.”
But I submit there is no ground here for breaking the immemorial seal of secrecy. The requisite quantum of proof was.not adduced. There is no evidence whatever that advice in aid of future wrongdoing was either sought or given. There is no suggestion of a criminal act or purpose under the cloak of the professional relationship — nothing to indicate the legal service was sought or obtained to aid the client in the planning or perpetration of a crime or a tort. Indeed, the majority exonerates the respondent attorney of conspiratorial complicity — of “any conspiracy” with his client “to obstruct justice.” The questions put all related to past acts and events. The client, Moretti, was then under inquiry by the Senate Crime Committee headed by Senator Kefauver and the Bergen County Grand Jury in relation to gaming and alleged official corruption. -There is no doubt of the existence of the relation of attorney and client; there is no contention contra. The questions all related to the identity of past recipients of “protection money” and “political contributions on the State and County level,” as revealed by the respondent attorney’s “so-called racketeer clients,” and whether his client, Moretti, “had told him that he had been to Mr. Dickerson’s home” and “a conversation had occurred between him (Moretti) and Dickerson.”
Obviously, these questions were not directed to the seeking or receiving of advice to promote future wrongdoing, beyond the lawful scope of the relation of attorney and client; indeed, the contention of the Deputy Attorney-General on the oral argument was that Moretti’s visit to Mr. Dickerson evinced a continuing purpose to obstruct justice which, in itself, deprived him of the privilege and would subject the *417attorney to call as a witness against him, freed of the duty of secrecy, on the trial of the later indictment had Moretti lived to respond to the charge. Certainly, the subsequent behavior of the client cannot alter the essential nature of the confidences legitimately reposed in the attorney where advice or aid for the commission of a crime or a tort was neither sought nor given.
If the rule be as the State conceives it, then the constitutional protection against self-crimination has little meaning: for the evidence which could not be had from the defendant himself would be adducible from his attorney, by an invasion of the confidence that induced the disclosures by the client to his attorney. Either that or the constitutional right to counsel would be subverted. The solemn obligation of secrecy inherent in this basic right to counsel is for the transgressor as well as the clean of heart, so long as the privilege is not turned to an unlawful end; and of such misuse there must be prima facie evidence, not mere conjecture or surmise.
The acceptance of the thesis here tendered will work a radical impairment of a great principle of civil liberty that has stood the test of centuries as founded in natural justice.
I would affirm the judgment.
Oliphant and Wachenpelb, JJ., join in this dissent.
For reversal — Chief Justice Vanderbilt, and Justices Burling, Jacobs and Brennan — 4.
For affirmance — -Justices Hbher, Oliphant and Wachenpeld — 3.