Commercial Litigation and Arbitration

Disclosure of Draft = Waiver of Privilege as to Final

The plaintiff in Masi v. DTE Coke Operations, LLC, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72990 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 1, 2007), prepared a factual summary he called "My Story" that he delivered to his counsel to assist in the prosecution of his case. When discovery demands were served, plaintiff's counsel asserted privilege. But the plaintiff had provided a first draft to his union. The court concluded that this waived privilege as to the draft. The consequence of waiver of privilege as to the draft was to waive privilege as to the final. Held: "When privilege is waived as to the first draft of a document, it is waived as to subsequent drafts as well" (citation omitted). This categorical a rule is not necessarily intuitive. There could be substantial additions to subsequent drafts and there is no obvious reason why such material should lose privileged status. But if a subject matter waiver has been effected, and the document addresses only a single subject matter, the result is understandable. The fairness approach to scope of waiver incorporated in Proposed Federal Rule of Evidence 502(a)(3) has much to commend it.

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