A federal judge in Illinois shot down former McDonald's senior executives' attempts to access handwritten notes from an investigation conducted by outside counsel with a NLJ top 500 firm, finding the information to be privileged.

In an Oct. 11 opinion, District Judge Mary M. Rowland of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied Victoria Guster-Hines and Domineca Neal's attempts to bypass McDonald's' assertion of attorney-client privilege over information stemming from a workplace conduct investigation led by Grace Speights, a partner with Morgan Lewis. The investigation began after the plaintiffs filed a discrimination suit in 2020 under the case caption Guster-Hines v. McDonald's.