When an insurance company steps into the shoes of its insured to sue a lawyer for malpractice, the lawyer cannot assert the attorney-client privilege to refuse to produce a litigation file, a federal judge has ruled.
“To close the door to proving the malpractice of an attorney by a subrogee by asserting the attorney-client privilege of the injured subrogor would effectively deny the subrogor the ability to prove, or even investigate, the attorney’s malpractice,” Senior U.S. District Judge James McGirr Kelly wrote in his seven-page memorandum in Ohio Casualty Co. v. The Southland Corp.
