Security Bank & Trust Company v. Cook Group, Inc.
- Patrick Schiltz
- 0:21-cv-02572
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 3
In Security Bank v. Cook, Judge Docherty denied requests to disclose privileged communications and reopen depositions.
Security Bank & Trust Company’s requests were denied. Cook Inc. and Cook Medical LLC were not required by this order to disclose the challenged communications or produce personnel for supplemental depositions.
What happened
Security Bank & Trust Company v. Cook Inc. and Cook Medical LLC involved the bank’s second request for a court order requiring the defendants to provide information. The requests concerned communications about royalty payments and additional depositions of the defendants’ personnel.
The bank asked the court to reject the defendants’ claim that certain internal communications were protected by attorney-client privilege. It also asked to question the defendants’ personnel again about the royalty decisions and documents produced late in discovery. The court had already denied a similar privilege request and said the bank had not shown a specific need for new depositions.
Judge John F. Docherty denied the motion as to both requests. He concluded that communications between employees could be protected when they reflected confidential communications with an attorney for obtaining or giving legal advice, and he found no basis to reconsider the earlier ruling. He also denied additional depositions because fact discovery had closed, the bank had not shown a specific need or prejudice, and it had not identified the people it wanted to question again.
The detailed version
- Security Bank & Trust Company v. Cook Group, Inc. · No. 0:21-cv-02572
- Patrick Schiltz
- May 16, 2023
Background
Security Bank & Trust Company filed a second motion to compel against Cook Inc. and Cook Medical LLC. At the hearing, the court had already denied the bank’s request to remove confidentiality labels from documents and granted its request for sales data sheets. This order addressed only two remaining requests: (1) overruling the defendants’ attorney-client privilege claims concerning internal communications about royalty-payment decisions, and (2) requiring the defendants’ personnel to participate in supplemental depositions.
Privilege Request
The bank sought to challenge privilege claims concerning the defendants’ decisions to continue paying royalties through mid-2019 and to stop paying royalties in March 2020. The court had addressed the issue in an earlier document-production order, and the bank acknowledged that its current request was partly renewed. The bank presented recent depositions in which witnesses invoked attorney-client privilege, but it did not offer new arguments showing that the earlier ruling should be reconsidered.
The court also rejected any request for a blanket ruling that all communications concerning the royalty decisions were unprivileged. It explained that communications between employees may be protected when they reflect confidential communications with an attorney made to obtain or provide legal advice. The fact that an email is exchanged between non-lawyers does not, by itself, make it discoverable. The bank did not explain why those principles should not apply to deposition testimony or show that the proposed testimony would not involve confidential communications with an attorney.
Supplemental Depositions
The court denied the request for additional depositions for three stated reasons. Fact discovery had closed, and the bank had not moved to extend the discovery deadline. The bank also had not described a specific need for more testimony or identified prejudice that would result from not reopening the depositions. Finally, it had not identified the individuals it wanted to depose again.
Disposition
The court denied Security Bank & Trust Company’s Second Motion to Compel as to both its request to overrule the defendants’ privilege claims and its request for supplemental depositions of the defendants’ personnel.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.