Minden Air Corporation v. Starr Indemnity & Liability Company, 3:13-cv-00592

Minden Air (plaintiff) sues Starr Indemnity (defendant) over damage to a P2V Tanker 55 after a June 3, 2012 landing incident, disputing the extent of hull damage and whether the aircraft can be restored to airworthiness.
Starr’s retained independent adjuster, Keith Brown, engaged James Everitt and J2 Engineering to inspect the aircraft and prepare reports; those reports were sent to the adjuster and to Minden Air’s broker (Caledonian), not directly to Starr’s counsel.
Caledonian listed Everitt/J2 as individuals with discoverable information; Starr adopted Caledonian’s disclosures, but Starr’s counsel did not directly retain Everitt/J2 and asserted the work product doctrine for Everitt/J2 materials.
Minden Air subpoenaed Everitt/J2 for multiple categories of documents; Starr moved to quash and for a protective order arguing work product protection and overbreadth.
The court found Starr failed to meet its burden to show the Everitt/J2 materials were prepared primarily "in anticipation of litigation"; it rejected wholesale work-product protection but limited discovery to documents related to the subject P2V Tanker 55 and sustained Starr’s objection to standing operating procedures as irrelevant.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Everitt/J2 materials are protected by work product doctrine	Materials are relevant and discoverable; subpoenas seek non-privileged documents	Everitt/J2 were retained to assist Starr’s investigation and their materials are protected as work product prepared for litigation	Denied as to broad work-product claim: Starr failed to show documents were prepared "because of" litigation; materials not single-purpose work product
Scope/relevance of subpoenaed categories	Requests for categories 1–4 and 6–10 are relevant to damage assessment	Requests are overbroad and must be limited to the subject aircraft claim	Granted in part: produce documents from categories 1–4 and 6–10 only insofar as they relate to the P2V Tanker 55 incident
Production of standing operating procedures (category 5)	Plaintiff seeks SOPs as potentially relevant to inspection/adjusting practices	Defendant says SOPs are unrelated and outside scope	Sustained: SOPs are beyond the scope and not relevant; not required to be produced
Timing / future expert disclosures	Plaintiff needs materials now for case preparation	Starr notes will disclose Everitt as an expert later and many documents will be produced upon expert disclosure	Court required limited immediate production within 21 days; expert-disclosure caveat noted but did not bar current discovery

Admiral Ins. Co. v. United States Dist. Ct. for Dist. of Ariz., 881 F.2d 1486 (9th Cir.) (work product doctrine protects materials prepared in anticipation of litigation)
Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495 (U.S.) (work product doctrine protects attorneys' mental processes)
In re Grand Jury Subpoena (Torf), 357 F.3d 900 (9th Cir.) (work product extends to agents and consultants retained for attorneys)
United States v. Richey, 632 F.3d 559 (9th Cir.) (applies "because of" test for dual-purpose documents)
United States v. Adlman, 134 F.3d 1195 (2d Cir.) (formulation of the "because of" standard for dual-purpose documents)