attorney-client privilege Tag Archives

Legal Intelligencer: Anticipation and Preparation: The Scope of the Pa. Work-Product Doctrine

April 20, 2022 | Edward T. Kang

Business-Paperwork-1024x576-1 In the April 14, 2022 edition of The Legal Intelligencer, Edward T. Kang of Kang Haggerty co-authored “Anticipation and Preparation: The Scope of the Pa. Work-Product Doctrine.”

The Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure are modeled after their federal counterparts and share much of the same language. Both contain provisions codifying the attorney work-product doctrine, and both use the phrase “prepared in anticipation of litigation” in defining the scope of this privilege. Despite this seemingly similar language, however, a stark distinction has emerged between the two. Continue reading ›

Legal Intelligencer: Attorney-Client Privilege and Abuse of Privilege

April 15, 2019 | Edward T. Kang

In the April 11, 2019 edition of The Legal Intelligencer, Edward Kang, Managing Member of Kang Haggerty wrote “Attorney-Client Privilege and Abuse of Privilege.”

The attorney-client privilege, the oldest evidentiary privilege known to the common law, is an exception to one of the main policies behind the paramount rule of evidence that relevant evidence is admissible at trial. In this regard, the attorney-client privilege is an obstruction to the search for the truth. The privilege protects confidential attorney-client communications made for the purposes of obtaining legal advice. While many attorney-client communications are confidential, they are not privileged unless they were made for obtaining legal advice. The attorney-client privilege is designed to facilitate free attorney-client communications without the fear of unwanted disclosure so that clients can receive competent legal advice from their lawyers. Continue reading ›

The Legal Intelligencer: Kang on M&As and Attorney-Client Privilege of Selling Corporations

April 1, 2016 | Edward T. Kang

In Edward Kang’s March 2016 civil litigation column in The Legal Intelligencer and the Pennsylvania Law Weekly, he writes on the issue of M&As and Attorney-Client Privilege of Selling Corporations.

Courts have long recognized that the attorney-client privilege extends to corporations, as in Upjohn v. United States, 449 U.S. 383 (1981). Because a corporation can act only through its agents, usually officers, a corporation’s attorney-client privilege generally applies to communications between the corporation’s authorized agents and counsel. As the U.S. Supreme Court explained in Upjohn, however, it is the corporation that holds the corporate attorney-client privilege, not individual officers.

Shareholders, not the Corporation, Holds Attorney-Client Privilege for Communications Between the Shareholders and Counsel

August 25, 2014 | Kang Haggerty LLC

On August 7, 2014, the Western District of Pennsylvania’s Judge Maurice B. Cohill, Jr. entered an order preliminary denying plaintiff’s motion to compel compliance with subpoena on counsel. In the case of Gary Miller Imports, Inc. v. Carter Dolittle, et al., plaintiff sought to compel the law firm of Macdonad Illig Jones & Britton, LLP to produce eight documents they felt did not fall under attorney-client privilege. Continue reading ›