Vazquez v. Mayorkas
- Joseph Spero
- 3:18-cv-07012
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Vazquez v. Mayorkas, Judge Spero unsealed proceedings and ordered settlement-related emails produced while leaving the settlement-enforcement motion under submission.
Tonette L. Vazquez was required to produce settlement-related emails, and the court ordered a previously sealed hearing transcript filed publicly. Mayorkas’s defense counsel and Vazquez’s former attorneys were involved in the ordered disclosure process.
What happened
In Vazquez v. Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas asked the court to enforce a settlement that defense counsel and Tonette L. Vazquez’s former attorneys had placed on the record during a judicial settlement conference. Vazquez, who was representing herself, said her attorneys acted without authorization.
The court ruled that Vazquez had waived attorney-client privilege for communications about the alleged settlement. It unsealed an earlier hearing held privately to protect that privilege, ordered the transcript prepared and filed publicly, and directed Vazquez to provide settlement-related emails to defense counsel by June 11, 2021.
Judge Spero left the motion to enforce the alleged settlement under submission and said the court would decide how to proceed after the transcript and emails were provided. The court also scheduled a further case management conference for July 30, 2021.
The detailed version
- Vazquez v. Mayorkas · No. 3:18-cv-07012
- Joseph Spero
- May 28, 2021
Background
Alejandro Mayorkas, identified in the order as the Secretary of Homeland Security, filed a motion to enforce a settlement agreement purportedly reached at a judicial settlement conference. Defense counsel and Tonette L. Vazquez’s former attorneys placed the alleged agreement on the record. The court held an evidentiary hearing on May 28, 2021, at which Vazquez testified. The order states that Vazquez was then representing herself.
Vazquez asserted that her former attorneys acted without authorization and “railroaded” her. The court held that, by making those assertions, she waived attorney-client privilege—the protection generally covering confidential communications between a client and the client’s lawyer—for communications concerning the purported settlement.
Orders Regarding Privilege and Discovery
The court had previously held part of a hearing on the former attorneys’ motion to withdraw privately and under seal to protect Vazquez’s privilege. Because the court found that Vazquez had waived the privilege, it ordered the August 21, 2020 ex parte proceedings unsealed. The clerk was directed to obtain a transcript at no cost to the parties, file it in the public record, and mail a copy to Vazquez.
The court also ordered Vazquez to provide defense counsel Wesley Samples, by June 11, 2021, copies of all emails she exchanged with her former attorneys concerning whether she accepted or rejected the purported settlement and whether those attorneys had authority to settle the case. The order stated that it did not preclude defense counsel from serving a subpoena on Vazquez’s former attorneys for those records.
Disposition
The motion to enforce the purported settlement remained under submission. The court stated that it would determine how to proceed after the transcript was prepared and the emails were produced. It scheduled a further case management conference for July 30, 2021, at 2:00 p.m. by Zoom. Judge Joseph C. Spero signed the order. The parties had consented to a magistrate judge presiding over the case for all purposes under 28 U.S.C. § 636(c).
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.