Justice Pagone's decision in Griffiths & Beerens Pty Ltd v Duggan [2008] VSC 230 came along just at the very moment I needed to find out the answer to a question I have always been unsure about. Say you have documents from one proceeding obtained from the other side on discovery. They are [...]
Entries Tagged as 'duties of confidentiality'
The implied undertaking yields to compulsion; relevance to a second proceeding a powerful 'special circumstance'
August 1st, 2008 · No Comments
Tags: Ethics · duties of confidentiality · duties regarding witnesses · duty to court · litigation ethics
Robyn Tampoe, Schapelle Corby's solicitor
July 6th, 2008 · 5 Comments
Update, 7 July 2008: Watch the video of Tampoe slagging off his client here.
Original post: Lawyers and their regulators should care about the Corby case, because at the relevant time, a lot of people loved Schapelle and Schapelle does not now much like her lawyers. One of them has hit back, calling the Corbys [...]
Tags: "disgraceful and dishonourable" · Client Legal Privilege · Ethics · Fiduciary duties · Misconduct · advertising · duties of confidentiality · duties regarding witnesses · duty to court · litigation ethics
Both sides apply to restrain the other's lawyers from acting
April 8th, 2008 · No Comments
I prepared an application to restrain a firm of solicitors from acting in a Corporations List matter in the Supreme Court recently, and so have been reading the latest cases about conflict injunctions. The very latest is TJ Board & Sons Pty Ltd v Castello [2008] VSC 91, where the plaintiff applied unsuccessfully to [...]
Tags: Ethics · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty · duty and interest
Britney Spears's 'doctor' criticised for public comments
February 8th, 2008 · 1 Comment
I am always astounded how many professionals make public comments about their clients. I cannot really understand why society allows lawyers to publish their memoirs. I read John Marsden's memoirs, and was not impressed by his comments about Ivan Milat. If I remember correctly, they suggested, or rekindled the suggestion in [...]
Tags: Ethics · doctors · duties of confidentiality
Latest case on privilege and inadvertent disclosure
December 3rd, 2007 · 1 Comment
If there is one area of the law which has always seemed to me to be all over the place (though I never really sat down and tried to nut it out), it's the law of privilege in its application to the inadvertently disclosed document. The latest English decision is MMI Research Ltd v [...]
Tags: Ethics · duties of confidentiality
Yet another corporate counsel privilege case; the US position.
November 28th, 2007 · 1 Comment
Even though legal professional privilege, duties of confidentiality, and other evidentiary privileges are something I try to keep up with, and though I have just advised a litigation funder on the subject, I would be challenged by an urgent brief to argue the privilege of a communication between in-house counsel and a staff member [...]
Tags: Ethics · duties of confidentiality · legal professional privilege
Father instructs lawyer as daughter's agent then daughter sues him: whose privilege?
November 16th, 2007 · No Comments
Here's a weird old privilege case: Sugden v Sugden [2007] NSWCA 312. A minor from Orange in rural NSW suffered bad injuries in a car crash while she was driving. She was on L plates and her father was supervising. Since she was all banged up and in the Royal North [...]
Tags: Ethics · Retainers · duties of confidentiality · legal professional privilege
The US position on legal professional privilege for in-house counsel communications
November 16th, 2007 · No Comments
Here's the state of the law in the US on the vexed issue of whether companies can assert legal professional privilege (aka client legal privilege) for the advice of employed lawyers (aka in-house counsel). It discusses the case of In re Vioxx Prods. Liab. Litig., 501 F.Supp.2d 789 (E.D. La. 2007)
Tags: duties of confidentiality · legal professional privilege
More on the Home Office v Harman implied undertaking in relation to litigation documents
November 16th, 2007 · No Comments
In a case in which a company is a party, the company gives an implied undertaking to the Court to use documents obtained through litigation compulsion — discovery, subpoena, call for production, etc. — only for the purposes of the proceeding, at least until they come into the public domain, for example by being adduced [...]
Tags: duties of confidentiality · litigation ethics
Peter Faris's comments about drugs and the Bar
November 4th, 2007 · 1 Comment
Update, 10 June 2008: The Bar's Ethics Committee dropped the investigation without giving reasons.
Update, 23 November: The press just can't seem to believe that anyone would be called Issac Brott, inevitably reverting to the more plausible Isaac Brott. And nor do they seem to be reading this blog. Here's The Australian again claiming the [...]
Tags: Discipline · Ethics · advertising · duties of confidentiality · litigation ethics · procedure · regulators' duties

