Sporck v. PeilSporck v. Peil
- Reporters:
- , , , ,
- Before:
- Seitz, Adams, James Hunter III
JAMES HUNTER, III, Circuit Judge.
This case arises on a Petition for Writ of Mandamus involving a discovery dispute between the parties to a securities fraud class action suit. The underlying action involves an allegation by plaintiff-respondent Raymond K. Peil that defendant National Semiconductor Corporation (“NSC“), defendant-petitioner Charles F. Sporck, NSC‘s president, and defendant Peter J. Sprague, NSC‘s chairman, conspired to inflate artificially the value of NSC stock, in order to enable Sporck and Sprague to sell their own shares at the inflated level. The wrongful conduct alleged includes various misrepresentations and nondisclosures of material facts during an eight-month period continuing from July 1, 1976, until March 1, 1977. Jurisdiction in this court is based on the All Writs Act,
During pretrial discovery, attorneys for Peil served numerous sets of combined interrogatory and document requests on defendants. In response, defendants produced hundreds of thousands of documents, from which Peil‘s attorneys selected more than 100,000 for copying. There is no allegation in this case that defendants have improperly concealed or refused to produce requested documents.
The issue presently before this court arose on May 16, 1983, at the deposition of defendant-petitioner Sporck. Prior to the deposition, counsel for defendants had prepared Sporck for his expected week-long deposition by showing him an unknown quantity of the numerous documents produced by defendants in response to plaintiff‘s discovery requests. Defense counsel selected and compiled these documents in a folder in Philadelphia, and transported them to California solely for the deposition. According to defense counsel, the selected documents represented, as a group, counsel‘s legal opinion as to the evidence relevant both to the allegations in the case and the possible legal defenses. It is conceded that none of the individual documents, in their redacted form, contained work product of defense counsel.
At the inception of the Sporck deposition, Peil‘s attorney asked: “Mr. Sporck, in preparation for this deposition, did you have occasion to examine any documents?” (Petition, Exhibit A at 9). Sporck answered affirmatively, and Peil‘s attorney first orally, and then by written motion pursuant to
Peil filed a motion to compel identification and production of the selected documents, on the ground that all documents used in preparing a witness for a deposition are properly discoverable under
I.
The remedy of mandamus is properly invoked only in extraordinary situations and where “necessary or appropriate in aid of [appellate] jurisdiction.”
In the case before us, petitioner has established that the issue in dispute “may at some future time come within the court‘s appellate jurisdiction,”2 that post-trial relief would be inadequate because the harm caused by identifying the selected documents would be irreparable,3 and that he has no other adequate means to obtain the relief sought other than by writ of mandamus.4 4] Further, we believe that review of the issue presented in this case “would comport with the instructional goals of mandamus.” United States v. Christian, 660 F.2d 892, 897 (3d Cir.1981). Because petitioner raises an issue new to this court and discussed in only a few reported district court decisions,5 review by mandamus, if otherwise appropriate, is consistent with the court‘s supervisory function. See, e.g., Schlagenhauf v. Holder, 379 U.S. 104, 85 S.Ct. 234, 13 L.Ed.2d 152 (1964); Bogosian v. Gulf Oil Corp., 738 F.2d 587, 591-92 (3d Cir.1984).
The question remains, however, whether petitioner‘s right to immediate relief by writ of mandamus is “clear and indisputable” because of clear error of the law by the trial court. Although discovery orders are normally committed to the discretion of the trial court, see, e.g., DeMasi v. Weiss, 669 F.2d 114, 122 (3d Cir.1982), petitioner argues that the trial court‘s failure to protect defense counsel‘s work product from discovery as mandated by
II.
The threshold issue in this case is whether the selection process of defense counsel in grouping certain documents together out of the thousands produced in this litigation is work product entitled to protection under
The work product doctrine had its modern genesis in the seminal opinion in Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 67 S.Ct. 385, 91 L.Ed. 451 (1947). In Hickman, the Court rejected “an attempt, without purported necessity or justification, to secure written statements, private memoranda and personal recollections prepared or formed by an adverse party‘s counsel in the course of his legal duties.” 329 U.S. at 510, 67 S.Ct. at 393. Preserving the privacy of preparation that is essential to the attorney‘s adversary role is the central justification for the work product doctrine. Without this zone of privacy:
Much of what is now put down in writing would remain unwritten. An attorney‘s thoughts, heretofore inviolate, would not be his own. Inefficiency, unfairness and sharp practices would inevitably develop in the giving of legal advice and in the preparation of cases for trial. The effect on the legal profession would be demoralizing. And the interests of the clients and the cause of justice would be poorly served.
Hickman, 329 U.S. at 511, 67 S.Ct. at 393.
The work product doctrine as articulated in Hickman has been partially codified in
Opinion work product includes such items as an attorney‘s legal strategy, his intended lines of proof, his evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of his case, and the inferences he draws from interviews of witnesses. See, e.g., In re Grand Jury Investigation, 599 F.2d 1224 (3d Cir.1979); see also Special Project, The Work Product Doctrine, 68 Cornell L.Rev. 760, 818-19 (1983) (cases cited therein). Such material is accorded an almost absolute protection from discovery because any slight factual content that such items may have is generally outweighed by the adversary system‘s interest in maintaining the privacy of an attorney‘s thought processes and in ensuring that each side relies on its own wit in preparing their respective cases. See, e.g., Upjohn Co. v. United States, 449 U.S. 383, 401, 101 S.Ct. 677, 688, 66 L.Ed.2d 584 (1981); In re Grand Jury Investigation, 599 F.2d 1224, 1231 (3d Cir.1979).
We believe that the selection and compilation of documents by counsel in this case in preparation for pretrial discovery falls within the highly-protected category of opinion work product. As the court succinctly stated in James Julian, Inc. v. Raytheon Co., 93 F.R.D. 138, 144 (D.Del.1982):
In selecting and ordering a few documents out of thousands counsel could not help but reveal important aspects of his understanding of the case. Indeed, in a case such as this, involving extensive document discovery, the process of selection and distillation is often more critical than pure legal research. There can be no doubt that at least in the first instance the binders were entitled to protection as work product.
See also Berkey Photo, Inc. v. Eastman Kodak Co., 74 F.R.D. 613, 616 (S.D.N.Y.1977) (notebooks representing “counsel‘s ordering of ‘facts,’ referring to the prospective proofs, organizing, aligning, and marshalling empirical data with the view to combative employment that is the hallmark of the adversary enterprise” categorized as work product). Further, in selecting the documents that he thought relevant to Sporck‘s deposition, defense counsel engaged in proper and necessary preparation of his client‘s case. As the Supreme Court noted in Hickman:
Proper preparation of a client‘s case demands that he assemble information, sift what he considers to be the relevant from the irrelevant facts, prepare his legal theories and plan his strategy without undue and needless interference. That is the historical and the necessary way in which lawyers act within the framework of our system of jurisprudence to promote justice and to protect their client‘s interest.
329 U.S. at 510-11, 67 S.Ct. at 393-94. In the instant case, without the protection that the work product doctrine accords his preparation, defense counsel may have foregone a sifting of the documents, or at the very least chosen not to show the documents to petitioner. As a result, petitioner may not have been as well-prepared for his deposition, and neither plaintiff nor defendant would have realized the full benefit of a well-prepared deponent‘s testimony. For these reasons,
This conclusion, however, does not end the issue. Respondent argues, and the trial court agreed, that operation of
III.
[I]f a witness uses a writing to refresh his memory for the purpose of testifying, ... (2) before testifying, if the court in its discretion determines it is necessary in the interest of justice, an adverse party is entitled to have the writing produced at the hearing, to inspect it, to cross-examine the witness thereon, and to introduce in evidence those portions which relate to the testimony of the witness.
This rule is applicable to depositions and deposition testimony by operation of
By its very language,
The second requirement--that the witness use the document for the purpose of testifying--was designed “to safeguard against using the rule as a pretext for wholesale exploration of an opposing party‘s files and to insure that access is limited only to those writings which may fairly be said in part to have an impact upon the testimony of the witness.”
In the case before us, the apparent conflict between the protected status of defense counsel‘s document selection process under
Indeed, if respondent‘s counsel had first elicited specific testimony from petitioner, and then questioned petitioner as to which, if any, documents informed that testimony, the work product petitioner seeks to protect--counsel‘s opinion of the strengths and weaknesses of the case as represented by the group identification of documents selected by counsel--would not have been implicated. Rather, because identification of such documents would relate to specific substantive areas raised by respondent‘s counsel, respondent would receive only those documents which deposing counsel, through his own work product, was incisive enough to recognize and question petitioner on. The fear that counsel for petitioner‘s work product would be revealed would thus become groundless.
IV.
21. We conclude, therefore, that the trial court committed clear error of law in ordering the identification of the documents selected by counsel. Because we are confident that the district court will proceed in accordance with our opinion without formal issuance of the writ, we will remand to the district court. See, e.g., Bogosian v. Gulf Oil Corp., 738 F.2d 587, 596 (3d Cir.1984); United States v. RMI Co., 599 F.2d 1183, 1190 (3d Cir.1979); Rapp v. Van Dusen, 350 F.2d 806, 814 (3d Cir.1965) (in banc).
SEITZ, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
The majority approves in effect the use of the work product doctrine to prevent an identification of documents reviewed by a witness in preparation for his deposition. I dissent because I am convinced that such a ruling is an impermissible expansion of the work product doctrine at the expense of legitimate discovery.
The plaintiffs-respondents sought in the district court the discovery of relevant objective facts: the identities of the documents that the deponent reviewed prior to testifying. These facts are not, in themselves, the opinion or thought processes of an attorney. Nor were the contents of the documents, all of which had already been produced by the defendants, created by defendants’ attorney in anticipation of litigation.
Yet, the defendant-petitioner claims that the mere identification of the documents examined prior to his deposition would reveal his attorney‘s litigation strategy. Presumably, the petitioner‘s argument must be that if the respondents knew which documents were reviewed, they could, upon examination of the documents identified, draw conclusions as to why each document was chosen.
The problem with the petitioner‘s theory is that it assumes that one can extrapolate backwards from the results of a selection process to determine the reason a document was selected for review by the deponent. There are many reasons for showing a document or selected portions of a document to a witness. The most that can be said from the fact that the witness looked at a document is that someone thought that the document, or some portion of the document, might be useful for the preparation of the witness for his deposition. This is a far cry from the disclosure of the a lawyer‘s opinion work product. Even assuming that the documents were selected by the petitioner‘s attorney, the subject matter is so undifferentiated that its potential for invasion of work product is miniscule at best. See In re Grand Jury Investigation, 599 F.2d 1224 (3d Cir.1979) (degree to which information reveals attorney‘s thought processes is a factor in whether opinion work product is revealed). See also United States v. Amerada Hess Corp., 619 F.2d 980, 988 (3d Cir.1980) (list of employees interviewed, selected out of all the corporation‘s employees, is not opinion work product).
Every act by a litigant or his attorney gives rise to similar vague inferences. For example, a typical interrogatory from a leading treatise would permit questions of the following form: “Identify each writing ... which relates or refers directly or indirectly to [a transaction in question]“. See, e.g., 2A L. Frumer & M. Waxner, Bender‘s Federal Practice Forms, 420.11, question 19 (1984). It cannot seriously be contended that an answer is not required because it would reveal the fact that the attorney thought that certain documents were relevant to the transaction.
Moreover, in order to claim the shield of opinion work product, it must be established that it is the attorney‘s thought processes that are revealed. In re International Systems and Controls Corp. Securities Litigation, 693 F.2d 1235, 1240 (5th Cir.1982). The respondents’ request did not require the identification of the person who selected the documents. The only disclosed connection to the petitioner‘s attorney in our situation is that the petitioner gratuitously volunteered the fact that his attorney selected the documents. To permit this volunteered information to provide a necessary link to attorney‘s thought processes, as the majority has done, is to permit the petitioner to cloak the non-work product aspects of the information sought with work product protection. Certainly an attorney cannot cloak a document under the mantle of work product by simply reviewing it. Brown v. Hart, Schaffner & Marx, 96 F.R.D. 64, 68 (N.D.Ill.1982). It is difficult to see how an attorney or his witness may insulate the discoverable fact that the witness reviewed a particular document by volunteering that the attorney selected the document for deposition preparation purposes. See Bogosian v. Gulf Oil Corp., 738 F.2d 587, 595 (3d Cir.1984).
Finally, the petitioner contends that the information sought was “fact” work product, and that the respondents have made an insufficient showing of need to require its production. Assuming without deciding that the information sought was fact work product, I would not decide this issue on a petition for a writ of mandamus. To reach this issue would require us to review a decision committed to the discretion of the district court, In re International Systems and Controls Corp. Securities Litigation, 693 F.2d at 1240-41, and such decisions do not constitute “clear and indisputable” legal error. Allied Chemical Corp. v. Daiflon, Inc., 449 U.S. 33, 36, 101 S.Ct. 188, 191, 66 L.Ed.2d 193 (1980). Further, relevation of fact work product does not constitute the same sort of irreparable harm that would come from the revelation of opinion work product.
Because I find no disclosure of the attorney‘s work product that would provide a basis for granting the writ, I would not reach the issue of whether a proper foundation had been established for the requested information under
Based on the record presented by the petitioner, I fail to see how any conclusions may be drawn as to what his attorney may or may not have thought about this litigation. The mere identification of documents used to prepare a witness for his deposition does not convey any meaningful information of the type entitled to protection under the work product doctrine. I would deny the petition.