An Internal Revenue Service subpoena seeking documents shared among an investor and his financing banks has been quashed by the U.S. Court of Appeals by the Second Circuit.

The court said the IRS was not entitled to documents shared between George Schaeffler, an 80 percent owner of the automotive and industrial parts supplier The Schaeffler Group, and a consortium of banks that financed his efforts to buy Continental AG, a German Company that refinanced when the global economy melted in 2008.

Overruling a lower court, the circuit said the attorney-client privilege protected the shared documents because the consortium and Schaeffler had “a common legal interest in the tax treatment of a refinancing and corporate restructuring” that followed the acquisition of Continental amid the turmoil highlighted by the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.