Jefferies Funding LLC v. Dasagroup Holdings Corp.

Background

The case was referred to Peter H. Kang for discovery matters. Jefferies Funding LLC and Dasagroup Holdings Corp. submitted a joint letter brief concerning two disputes: whether Dasagroup’s privilege log adequately supported its attorney-client privilege claims, and whether Dasagroup had to produce documents withheld as trade secrets.

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(5), a party withholding otherwise discoverable material as privileged must identify the privilege and describe the withheld material sufficiently for the other side to assess the claim. Attorney-client privilege protects confidential communications between a lawyer and client made for the purpose of obtaining or giving legal advice. It protects communications, not the underlying facts.

Privilege-log dispute

Dasagroup’s privilege log included fields such as Bates numbers, custodians, dates, senders, recipients, email subjects, file names, and the privilege claimed. For some entries, Dasagroup redacted the email-subject and file-name fields, asserting that those fields themselves revealed privileged attorney-client communications. Jefferies argued that the redactions left the log insufficient.

The court held that the redactions themselves did not violate the applicable standard. A privilege log need not provide a word-for-word reproduction of an email subject line. But the court agreed with Jefferies that Dasagroup’s general-subject-matter description—stating only that the document was a privileged and confidential attorney-client communication—did not describe the document’s nature or subject matter.

The court ordered Dasagroup to serve an amended privilege log for those entries. The amended log must provide enough textual description of the document’s nature and, when Dasagroup continued to claim that the redacted email subject or file name was independently privileged, describe the nature of that information without revealing protected content.

The court also found insufficient entries for documents that appeared to be attachments to emails. Dasagroup had to provide the author or authors, recipients, date, and a sufficient description of each document’s nature. The log also had to identify whether each document was an attachment and identify the related email, such as by referring to the preceding row or a Bates number. The court made no finding at that time about whether privilege was justified for each attachment; Dasagroup retained the burden of supporting each privilege claim.

Trade-secret documents

Jefferies also sought documents that Dasagroup had withheld on the ground that they disclosed Dasagroup’s trade secrets or those of a third party. Dasagroup clarified that it was withholding only documents that would reveal Dasagroup’s own trade secrets. Dasagroup agreed to produce the disputed documents with an Attorneys-Eyes Only designation under the case’s protective order.

Because of that agreement, the court denied as moot Jefferies’ motion to compel the trade-secret documents. The court ordered Dasagroup to produce them on a rolling basis beginning on or before September 15, 2025, and to complete production by September 26, 2025, with the specified confidentiality designation or another designation Dasagroup reasonably concluded was appropriate under the protective order.

Disposition

The court granted the motion to compel Dasagroup to serve a revised privilege log and ordered the revised log by September 26, 2025. The court denied as moot the dispute concerning documents withheld on trade-secret grounds and ordered their production on the stated schedule. The order resolved Docket 125.