Rubalcava v. City Of San Jose

Background

Lionel Rubalcava brought federal constitutional and state-law claims arising from his wrongful conviction for attempted murder. The opinion says he served more than seventeen years in prison before the Santa Clara County Superior Court vacated his conviction. Rubalcava claims that San Jose police officers and Santa Clara County investigators fabricated evidence and committed other misconduct that led to the conviction.

In 2018, with assistance from the Northern California Innocence Project, Rubalcava filed a state-court petition seeking to vacate his conviction. That petition included a declaration by his former attorney, Paige Kaneb. The declaration described statements made by witnesses to Kaneb or her investigators during interviews conducted in 2015 and 2016. Rubalcava acknowledged that related materials existed, including attorney notes, memoranda, and emails.

The County Defendants and City Defendants sought documents concerning the interviews described in Kaneb’s declaration. The City Defendants also sought other factual investigative information concerning witnesses mentioned in Rubalcava’s complaint and identified in his initial disclosures.

Legal standard

The work-product doctrine, protected by Rule 26(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, generally shields documents and tangible things prepared for litigation. It can protect interview notes, memoranda, summaries, analyses, and verbatim witness statements. The protection may be waived when a party voluntarily discloses protected material to an adversary or uses the material in a way that makes disclosure to an adversary substantially more likely.

Even when work-product protection has not been waived, discovery may be ordered if the requesting party shows a substantial need for the material and cannot obtain its equivalent without undue hardship. However, the court must protect an attorney’s mental impressions, conclusions, opinions, and legal theories.

Rulings on the discovery disputes

The court held that Rubalcava waived work-product protection concerning the contents of the witness statements described in Kaneb’s declaration. The declaration had been publicly filed in the state-court proceeding and used to challenge Rubalcava’s conviction. The court reasoned that Rubalcava made testimonial use of the interview contents by presenting Kaneb’s declaration, even though the declaration did not expressly refer to or rely on particular work-product documents.

The waiver was limited to factual, or non-opinion, work product corresponding to the disclosures in the declaration. The court ordered production of recordings, transcripts, or verbatim witness statements documenting interviews with Nicholas Luke Faria, Alex Borrego, Anne Fields, Daniel Cerecerez, David Gonzalez, David Holmes, Angel Gonzalez, and Christine Gaye on the dates identified in the order. If notes or memoranda contain both factual work product and attorney opinions, only the factual portions must be produced, and opinion work product may be redacted. A complete recording or transcript eliminates the need to produce duplicate notes or memoranda documenting the same interview. Emails and other communications need not be produced unless they memorialize the contents of the specified interviews and no other source documents that content; any opinion work product in produced communications may be redacted.

The court rejected the City Defendants’ argument that Rubalcava waived work-product protection merely by describing information from witnesses in his complaint or identifying witnesses and the subjects of their expected testimony in mandatory initial disclosures. The court held that pleadings and initial disclosures are not testimonial and serve different functions from witness testimony. Accordingly, the court denied the City Defendants’ request for an order requiring production of all factual investigative material concerning witnesses referenced in the complaint or identified in the initial disclosures.

The court also denied the City Defendants’ request for production based on substantial need. The City Defendants had not attempted to interview the witnesses and therefore had not shown that the witnesses’ memories had faded or that obtaining equivalent information by other means would cause undue hardship. The court also rejected the argument that an imbalance existed because Rubalcava’s former counsel had shared work-product materials with his current counsel.

Disposition

The order concluded that Rubalcava waived work-product protection for the contents of the witness statements disclosed in Kaneb’s declaration and required him to produce the specifically described documents, subject to the stated limits and possible redactions. The court denied the City Defendants’ broader discovery request and denied their substantial-need request. The opinion does not state a separate disposition of every aspect of the County Defendants’ request beyond the production ruling described above.