Court Opinion

ID: 9460770
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:59:54.126223+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:46.499227
License: Public Domain

BELL, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent.
The operative facts here are:
(1) The records sought to be produced are owned by the accountant and not taxpayer (the records had to do with taxpayer’s tax returns). The government did not seek the production of records owned by taxpayer.
(2) When the taxpayer telephoned the accountant to say that the agents were in his office, the accountant advised taxpayer to say nothing and not to produce his records.
(3) The accountant then selected a lawyer for taxpayer, took the records in question (the accountant’s records), to the taxpayer’s office early the next morning, where he handed them to taxpayer who, in turn, handed them to the lawyer.
I dissent for two reasons. First, taxpayer can take no comfort in the activity of the accountant and lawyer. Without venturing into a dissertation on situation ethics, I am satisfied to say that lawyers and accountants have a higher call to duty than that of acting to prevent the production of evidence through the use of a privilege under the circumstances here. The privilege is designed to protect a client’s confidence imparted during the attorney-client relationship.
The privilege does not exist, however, for the purpose of being used initially and directly as a stratagem or device to place pre-existing documentary evidence beyond the reach of the law. While conceding this, the majority in the same breath uses the attorney-client relationship in a futile effort to establish an expectation of privacy to satisfy one of the requirements of Couch v. United States, 1973, 409 U.S. 322, 93 S.Ct. 611, 34 L.Ed.2d 548.
In Couch, a taxpayer was not allowed the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination even as to her own records in the hands of her accountant. The court stated that the two essential bases for the privilege were absent: no legitimate expectation of personal privacy in the records, and no governmental compulsion against the person of the taxpayer.
Where is taxpayer’s expectation of personal privacy in the accountant’s records here ? What compulsion is there against the person of the taxpayer in a summons against his lawyer to produce an accountant’s records which were for a fleeting moment placed in the hands of the taxpayer by the accountant. An expectation of personal privacy of the Couch type cannot be generated ipso facto by creating a lawyer-client relationship. I would therefore pretermit further consideration of the element of compulsion.
Moreover, it would appear that the majority opinion may conflict with our decision in United States v. White, 5 Cir., 1973, 477 F.2d 757, aff’d en banc, 487 F.2d 1335. The only possible differ*456ence between this case and White is that the accountant’s records in White, reflecting, as here, the affairs of the taxpayer, were transferred directly from the accountant to the lawyer. We held that there was no Fifth Amendment privilege to be exercised for the taxpayer by his lawyer in the accountant’s records.
I did not join in White on the narrow basis of exalting form over substance to the extent of reserving a different holding for a set of facts where the same records had passed through the hands of the taxpayer.
For the reasons stated I would affirm the district court to the end of enforcing the summons.