In One Beacon America Insurance v. Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance, No. 2012-cv-4490 (April 13, 2015, Lackawanna CCP), the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas held that the plaintiff insurance company’s inadvertent disclosure of an intra-office memorandum, referred to as a case conference sheet, was not privileged and therefore did not open the door to a subject-matter waiver of attorney-client privilege, despite the fact that it revealed sensitive communications from the plaintiff’s attorney.
While the opinion thoroughly analyzed the attorney-client privilege as presented in the Superior Court’s Nationwide Mutual Insurance v. Fleming, 924 A.2d 1259 (Pa.Super. 2007), decision, and presented a very detailed discussion of the four factors that must be satisfied before communication becomes protected by the attorney-client privilege, I was troubled by the fact that the court ultimately held that the case conference sheet, which contained communication from One Beacon America Insurance’s attorney to, presumably, a One Beacon claims adjuster was not protected by attorney-client privilege.
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