United States v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.
- Jesse Furman
- 1:12-cv-07527-JMF
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In United States v. Wells Fargo Bank, Judge Furman denied the Government’s request to disclose protected documents to the IRS.
The ruling directly affected the Department of Justice’s request to provide Wells Fargo’s protected documents to the Internal Revenue Service, and it preserved the restrictions governing those documents under the protective order.
What happened
In United States v. Wells Fargo Bank, the Government asked to give the Internal Revenue Service two documents that Wells Fargo had marked confidential under a protective order. The request came nearly six years after the case ended.
The court said the documents were discovery materials covered by the protective order. That order required the Department of Justice to destroy them, and the parties had agreed that documents kept with attorney files would be treated as destroyed and not used for any purpose. The court also said the order’s exception for reporting possible legal violations did not cover responding to an IRS request.
Judge Jesse M. Furman denied the Government’s motion and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motion from the docket.
The detailed version
- United States v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. · No. 1:12-cv-07527-JMF
- Jesse Furman
- Feb. 8, 2022
Background
Nearly six years after the case concluded, the Government asked the court to permit the Department of Justice (DOJ) to disclose two documents to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., had designated the documents as confidential under the protective order in the case.
Court’s analysis
The court held that the documents were “Discovery Materials” under the protective order’s broad definition. Paragraph 32 required the DOJ to destroy those materials more than five years earlier, and the DOJ had repeatedly certified that it had done so. The court concluded that allowing the DOJ to share documents it was required to destroy would conflict with the protective order and Wells Fargo’s reasonable expectations.
The court also addressed the parties’ agreement concerning documents mixed with attorney files. Under that agreement, such documents did not have to be physically destroyed, but they were treated as “de facto destroyed” and could not be accessed or used for any purpose. As a legal matter, the court therefore treated the documents as unavailable to the DOJ, including for disclosure under Paragraph 22.
Finally, the court found that Paragraph 22 did not authorize the proposed disclosure. That provision allowed the DOJ to disclose confidential documents to report a potential violation of law or regulation. Here, the DOJ was responding to an IRS request rather than reporting a potential violation. The court therefore found that the protective order’s plain language prohibited disclosure to the IRS.
Ruling
Judge Jesse M. Furman denied the Government’s motion. The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate ECF No. 327.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.