103 Mass. 523 | Mass. | 1870
The case finds that Brant and Peck, who were traders residing in Chicago, sent a letter by mail to the witness Abbott, an attorney at law residing at Lowell, for the purpose of consulting or employing him as such, in the collection of a debt which they alleged to be due to them from the defendant; and that he, in answer to their letter, gave them some advice as to the best mode of proceeding in order to accomplish that object. No other communication appears to have passed between them, and no proceedings were commenced against the defendants for somewhat over a year. To require him to produce the letter, and to testify as to his own reply to it, was apparently in direct violation of the rule that professional communications between attorney and client are so far privileged that the attorney, when called as a witness, shall not be either compelled or permitted to disclose them. The defendants do not in our judgment relieve the case of this difficulty by the suggestion that there was some fraud or collusion between Brant & Company and the plaintiff, to which the attorney was privy, or in relation to which he gave some advice. The nature of this alleged fraud is not indicated with much distinctness in the bill of exceptions. We are unable to see anything in the case, as re
The two letters from the plaintiff to the same witness do not necessarily fall within the rule referred to, and are not of a specially confidential character. In the first of them he does little more than inquire whether certain earlier letters have been received ; and in the second he simply requests him to deliver the note declared on to another attorney. The error in the other part of the case, however, renders it necessary to sustain the plaintiff’s exceptions. Exceptions sustained.