“What Some Attorneys Do!”
“Blame the Secretary”
A couple of defense lawyers with prominent law firms in Monterey were recently caught off guard (and could face charges of criminal conspiracy) when they slipped by letting a document come to light that had been intentionally buried a year before and kept from a plaintiff.
The document entitled, “To Whom It May Concern” not only impeached the testimony of the person that wrote it, but also that of other co-defendants at trial being defended by a separate law firm in another action stemming from the same real estate transaction.
The defendant, when put on the “hot seat”, also slipped by letting it be known that a previous co-defendant’s attorney met with her prior to her deposition and went over the questions he was going to ask and prepared her testimony.
In other words, the two defense lawyers not only worked to bury the truth and the document but then tampered with testimony prior to a deposition.
Now the lawyers are making up a story that the document was suppose to be an attorney-client privileged document, and that it was not to be produced because the attorney had written a note on it saying “No, do not produce”.
The main point is that if it was a privileged document it was to be identified and withheld, and in addition, one attorney can not disclose this documents to another attorney if that attorney is not representing the same client.
The attorney blames his secretary saying she made a mistake. (My dog ate my homework)
What’s really funny (actually ludicrous) about the story is that when the document was first given to the client at the deposition, the lawyer and her both looked at it, and questions started to be asked. The attorney then asked for a recess to speak to the client about the document.
The lawyer and the client came back into the room and more questions were then asked. There was no objections made as to the document being privileged.
But when the question was asked, “So why didn’t you produce this document a year ago, the dummy attorney then says, “Oh, I think it’s privileged”. Yeah Right!.
Now, Gene says if you can just get a local attorney to accuse another local attorney of criminal fraud………
Gene says it would be about as easy as getting a snowball in hell not to melt.