Hamdan v. Ind. Univ. Health N. (Summary)

ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGED DOCUMENTS

Hamdan v. Ind. Univ. Health N., No. 1:13-cv-00195-WTL-MJD (S.D. Ind. June 24, 2014)

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana granted in part and denied in part a surgeon’s motion to compel production of documents. The surgeon alleged that a hospital had discriminated against him on the basis of his race and ethnicity. The surgeon accused the hospital of entertaining false charges of professional misconduct against him, of harming his reputation through disciplinary actions, and of forcing his resignation.

The surgeon sought to obtain e-mails exchanged among the hospital’s supervisory, medical, nursing, and human resources personnel. The defendants refused to produce these e-mails for the plaintiff on the grounds that the e-mails were guarded by the attorney-client privilege and by the attorney work product rule. Attorney-client privilege is a legal doctrine that permits clients to refuse to disclose confidential communications with an attorney. The work product rule provides a limited degree of protection during discovery proceedings for the work product of an attorney.

The court permitted the surgeon to view certain e-mails that were “HR focused” and which documented “at-the-moment analysis” by the hospital’s chief medical officer and chief nursing officer, among others. The court ruled that simply copying attorneys on an e-mail chain in order to keep them abreast of business-related occurrences is not sufficient to guarantee the protection of attorney-client privilege or the work product rule. The court denied the surgeon’s request for the remaining e-mails, deciding that those e-mails qualified for protection.