Roc Nation LLC v. HCC International Insurance Company, PLC

Background

The court reviewed letters from the parties concerning two discovery disputes in Roc Nation’s claims against HCC. The opinion states that Roc Nation asserted a breach-of-contract claim and an insurer bad-faith claim.

First discovery dispute

Roc Nation asked HCC to produce documents concerning other critical asset protection policies HCC had issued and how HCC had interpreted those policies. The court ordered HCC to respond to Roc Nation’s third request for production, concerning whether claims had been submitted under those policies, who submitted them, and how many claims were submitted. The court also ordered HCC to respond to the fourth request, concerning HCC’s analyses of claims submitted under those policies.

HCC could redact information identifying the policyholder, but had to provide general information such as the policyholder’s size and industry. The court found these materials relevant to Roc Nation’s claims because they could show how HCC had interpreted similar claims in the past.

The court did not order production of the remaining categories of requested materials, which concerned all critical asset protection policies issued from 2010 to 2020, all investigative requests concerning those policies, communications with policyholders about policy terms, and litigation documents about those policies. The court found those requests less relevant and concluded that the burden of obtaining the materials would be disproportionate to their likely value.

Second discovery dispute

Roc Nation challenged HCC’s withholding of documents as protected by attorney-client privilege, which generally protects confidential communications seeking or providing legal advice. The first category involved communications between HCC and attorneys from Vogrin Frimet before HCC denied Roc Nation’s insurance claim. Roc Nation argued that the attorneys were investigating the claim, while HCC argued that they were providing legal advice.

The court noted that documents prepared in the ordinary course of an insurer’s investigation into whether to pay or deny a claim are not privileged merely because an attorney conducted the investigation. To resolve the issue, the court ordered HCC to send the court unredacted versions of all documents in that category, including documents HCC had not produced and documents it had produced in redacted form. The court stated that it would review those documents privately, known as an in-camera review.

The second category involved documents HCC had logged as privileged even though no attorney appeared as a sender or recipient. Except for documents already produced, the court ordered HCC to provide Roc Nation with redacted versions, limiting the redactions to clearly privileged portions concerning legal advice. The court warned HCC not to overstate its privilege claims.

The court also ruled that attachments to emails are not automatically privileged merely because they were attached to a privileged email. HCC had to produce attachments unless the attachments themselves contained or referred to legal advice.

Disposition

The court ordered HCC to submit the unredacted documents for private review and to produce the newly redacted documents and nonprivileged attachments to Roc Nation by 5 p.m. on April 13, 2020. The order resolved discovery issues and did not finally determine the privilege status of the documents submitted for the court’s review.