Duke v. San Francisco Community College District
- Phyllis Hamilton
- 4:19-cv-06327
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Duke v. City College, Judge Kim denied Duke’s motion to compel unredacted privileged documents in a discovery dispute.
The ruling affected Shalamon Duke’s request for unredacted documents and the defendants’ assertion of attorney-client privilege over those documents.
What happened
Shalamon Duke sued City College of San Francisco and others, and sought unredacted copies of documents withheld under attorney-client privilege. The documents concerned allegations that Duke had been accused of sexual harassment in his job before City College of San Francisco.
Duke argued that the defendants waived privilege by violating the Brown Act, including nonlegal individuals in communications, and copying lawyers on communications that were not for legal advice. The court applied federal privilege law because the case included federal and state claims.
After reviewing the documents privately, the court found that the communications reflected City College of San Francisco seeking legal advice from its outside and in-house lawyers. Judge Sallie Kim therefore denied Duke’s motion to compel production of the unredacted documents.
The detailed version
- Duke v. San Francisco Community College District · No. 4:19-cv-06327
- Phyllis Hamilton
- Mar. 11, 2021
Background
The parties submitted a joint letter about a discovery dispute involving documents that defendants withheld and listed on a privilege log. Duke sought an order requiring production of the documents in unredacted form. The defendants asserted attorney-client privilege, which protects confidential communications between a lawyer and client made to obtain legal advice.
The opinion states that the defendants argued City College of San Francisco sought legal advice about allegations that Duke had been accused of sexual harassment in his job before the college. Because the case included both federal and state claims, the court applied federal privilege law.
Arguments
Duke argued that the defendants waived attorney-client privilege by violating the Brown Act. He also argued that including nonlegal and nonessential individuals in communications waived the privilege, and that merely sending a communication to a lawyer did not make the communication privileged. Duke asserted that the defendants were not seeking legal advice in the challenged communications.
The court explained that the challenged communications fell into two categories: communications between City College of San Francisco employees and outside lawyers, and communications among college employees and the college’s general counsel and associate general counsel. The court noted that an entity communicates through its employees. It also distinguished the presumption that communications with outside counsel are made to obtain legal advice from the treatment of communications with in-house lawyers, which do not receive the same presumption.
Ruling
After reviewing all the challenged communications in camera, meaning privately and outside the parties’ presence, the court found that City College of San Francisco sought legal advice from its lawyers in those communications. The court therefore denied Duke’s motion to compel production of the unredacted documents. The order was signed by United States Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.