Court Opinion

ID: 9491434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:14:05.229604+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:44.456168
License: Public Domain

HANSEN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the court’s opinion and in its judgment. I write separately to express my view that the district court would be well advised to heed the suggestion contained in the last sentence of footnote 3 of the opinion. In this case, where two state trial courts have come to opposite conclusions concerning whether Documents 210 and 213 are privileged, I believe the better practice would have been for the district court to have made its own determination about whether or not Documents 210 and 213 are privileged before it made its threshold determination. It did not do so. Our remand now permits it to do so if, in its discretion, it deems it advisable, notwithstanding our affirmance of its present threshold decision. If it determines to revisit the threshold decision and finds that the two documents are privileged, then it must make the threshold redetermination without considering the two documents as part of the plaintiffs’ evidence.