Lawyers Weekly has an article by some folk at Allens noting Justice Branson's decision in Rich v Harrington [2007] FCA 1987, a mega anti-discrimination suit brought by Christina Rich, a former partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia against the other partners. There are so many privilege cases which come out, it's hard to know which ones to [...]

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If I recall correctly, one of my first contested hearings as a young solicitor was about whether the claim for privilege over a loss adjuster's report in an affidavit of documents drafted by me was kosher.  I went on to write an article on the subject in that august journal, the newsletter of Women in [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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)

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I was already a fan of the first edition of Judge Stephen Walmsley SC, Alister Abadee, and Ben Zipser's excellent Professional Liability in Australia, published by Thomson, and had been waiting for the new edition with interest. I got myself a copy the other day. It's good, and there are substantial additions since [...]

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These propositions from Z v New South Wales Crime Commission [2007] HCA 7 may be useful in relation to matters more generally than for understanding the basis of the Court's decision:

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A man came to a lawyer and sought advice about the implications of anonymously passing to police information about a suspected criminal. The solicitor gave advice, and the client authorised the communication of the information to the police. The solicitor passed it on without advising his client's identity. Years later, after the suspected criminal allegedly [...]

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I found some useful web resources yesterday. First, Peter Faris QC publishes blogs which do no more than consolidate in one place all the court-provided information (what I think of as the unreported version of a headnote) about the decisions of the High Court, Supreme Court of Victoria, and Victorian Court of Appeal. Each court's [...]

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Part I is the extraordinary story of a leading labour lawyer in Melbourne who was found to have induced breach of contract in taking a statement from an ex-employee of the other side in a class action in which the lawyer was the plaintiffs' solicitor. Unbeknownst to him, the ex-employee continued to be bound by [...]

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