Difficult privilege issues often arise in litigation, including evaluating whether a party has impliedly waived privilege through its litigation conduct, and the extent to which a party can use a privileged document that has been inadvertently produced. Southern District Judge Nelson Roman and Magistrate Judge Henry Pitman recently addressed two such issues in Barbini v. First Niagara Bank, N.A., 2019 WL 1922041 (April 29, 2019), and In re Keurig Green Mountain Single Serve Coffee Antitrust Litigation, 2019 WL 2003959 (May 7, 2019).

In Barbini, Judge Roman addressed whether a party had impliedly waived its attorney-client privilege by making statements during discovery that implicated its counsel’s advice. In Keurig, Judge Pitman addressed whether a party to whom an allegedly privileged document was inadvertently produced could refer to the contents of the document for the limited purpose of challenging the claim of privilege. Roman found that a privilege waiver had occurred and Pitman found that the recipient of the allegedly privileged document could refer to its contents in challenging the claim of privilege.

‘Barbini’