Chen-Oster v. Goldman, Sachs & Co. LLC.
- Analisa Torres
- 1:10-cv-06950
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Chen-Oster v. Goldman, Sachs & Co., Judge Lehrburger denied plaintiffs’ request to revisit privilege and sustained Goldman’s clawback request.
The plaintiffs and Goldman Sachs were affected: the plaintiffs’ request to revisit the privilege ruling was denied, and Goldman’s clawback request was sustained.
What happened
In Chen-Oster v. Goldman, Sachs & Co., the plaintiffs asked the court to reconsider whether Goldman’s “White Papers” were protected by attorney-client privilege. The request followed testimony from a former Goldman Chief Diversity Officer and concerned Goldman’s demand for the return of a paper produced by mistake.
The court said attorney-client privilege cannot be used to hide underlying workforce data or shield civil-rights violations. But Goldman represented that it had already produced all relevant demographic data, including the data underlying the White Papers, so the plaintiffs could analyze that data themselves. The court also found that Goldman had shown the White Papers were protected legal communications.
Judge Robert W. Lehrburger denied the plaintiffs’ request and sustained Goldman’s clawback request. The order addressed document privilege and discovery, not the underlying employment-discrimination claims.
The detailed version
- Chen-Oster v. Goldman, Sachs & Co. LLC. · No. 1:10-cv-06950
- Analisa Torres
- Aug. 24, 2020
Background
The court had previously ruled on the privilege status of Goldman Sachs’s “White Papers.” The papers were created to provide legal advice about the diversity of Goldman’s workforce. During a July 30, 2020 conference about Goldman’s request to claw back a White Paper that had been produced inadvertently, the court stated that its prior ruling remained in effect.
On August 14, 2020, the plaintiffs asked the court to revisit the privilege issue and deny Goldman’s clawback request based on deposition testimony from a former Goldman Chief Diversity Officer.
Reasoning
The court recognized that attorney-client privilege should not be abused. It cited the principle that a corporation cannot avoid civil-rights litigation by sending all workforce-demographic information to in-house counsel, destroying the underlying records, and then claiming that the counsel’s file is privileged.
The court found that this was not the situation presented. Goldman represented that it had already produced all relevant demographic data, including the data underlying the White Papers. The plaintiffs therefore could analyze the data just as Goldman could. The court also found that Goldman had met its burden of establishing that the White Papers were protected by attorney-client privilege.
Disposition
The court denied the plaintiffs’ request to revisit the privilege issue and sustained Goldman’s clawback request. The order concerns document privilege and discovery; it does not decide the underlying employment-discrimination claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.