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The Law of "Common Interest Privilege" Discussed in the Context of BC Injury Lawsuits


Further to my many posts on the topic of discovery, when parties are involved in a lawsuit in the BC Supreme Court the Rules of Court require the parties to disclose certain information to the opposing side.  Generally all relevant information needs to be disclosed however there are exceptions to this and one such exception is ‘privilege‘.
Generally speaking (this is not an exhaustive list), privileged documents are documents that were created with an expectation of confidentiality between a party and his/her lawyer or documents that were created with the dominant purpose of advancing the parties interests in court.
The purpose behind the privilege exception to disclosure is to permit individuals to freely discuss their legal matters and work with their lawyers to advance their interests without the fear that these conversations/actions can come back to hurt the individuals interests later on.
The law recognizes an extension of privilege between one client and their lawyer to multiple people and that lawyer if the conversations took place in anticipation of a lawsuit and the multiple parties have a common interest.  This type of privilege is sensibly called ‘common interest privilege‘.  Reasons for judgement were released today discussing this area of law and highlighting some of the limitations of common interest privilege.
In today’s case (Peters v. Paterson) the Plaintiff was seriously injured while windsurfing when he was involved in a collision with a motorboat.  He eventually sued multiple parties including the people alleged to have been operating the boat (the “Motorboat Defendants”) and the people alleged to have rented the boat to the Motorboat Defendants (the “Renter Defendants”).
Before the lawsuit started one of the Renter Defendants apparently feared a potential lawsuit and retained the services of a lawyer.  That lawyer retained an adjuster who immediately took statements from a handful of people including the people who would later turn out to be the Motorboat Defendants.
After all the Defendants were sued by the Plaintiff the Renter Defendant who initially hired the lawyer issued a Third Party Notice against the Motorboat Defendants (a Third Party Notice is a document which alleges that if a certain defendant is found at fault and has to pay that the Third Party has to indemnify that defendant for the judgement).
The Plaintiff then asked for the statements of the Motorboat Defendants to be produced.  The Lawyer for the Renter Defendants refused citing ‘common interest privilege‘.  Ultimately an application was brought to court to force disclosure and the application succeeded.  Master Taylor of the BC Supreme Court, Vancouver Registry, held that the Third Party Notice took away any claim to common interest privilege.  The key reasons were as follows:

[13] Common interest privilege is said to be an extension of the privilege against disclosure of solicitor-client communications.  As Wigmore defines it:

The chief instance occurs when the same attorney acts for two parties having a common interest, and each party communicates with him.  Here the communications are clearly privileged from disclosure at the instance of a third person.  Yet they are not privileged in a controversy between the two original parties, inasmuch as the common interest and employment forbade concealment by either from the other.  (Wigmore’s emphasis)

[14] The defendants take the position that the statements in this case are covered by common interest privilege, which, they submit, applies to an exchange of confidential information between individuals who have a common interest in anticipated litigation.  The defendants cite Buttes Gas and Oil Co. v. Hammer (No. 3), [1980] 3 All E. R. 475 (C.A) in support of their position where Lord Denning says:

There is a privilege which may be called a “common interest” privilege.  That is a privilege in aid of anticipated litigation in which several persons have a common interest.  It often happens in litigation that a plaintiff or defendant has other persons standing alongside him – who have the self-same interest as he – and who have consulted lawyers on the self-same points as he – but these others have not been made parties to the action…All exchange counsel’s opinions.  All collect information for the purpose of litigation.  All make copies.  All await the outcome with the same anxious anticipation – because it affects each as much as it does the others.

[15] The defendants maintain that common interest privilege can apply to witness statements and in fact has been so applied in a number of Canadian cases.

[16] On the other hand, the plaintiff asserts that the case at bar is distinguishable from other cases in that there is no suggestion by the defendant or their counsel that counsel has ever worked in conjunction with the motorboat defendants to jointly advance the interests of all the defendants.  As well, the plaintiff maintains, there has not been any evidence led to indicate the motorboat defendants understood the reason for giving their statements, the uses their information would be put to, or that their statements would be kept privileged from the plaintiff.  In fact, in the instant case, two of the motorboat defendants have signed authorizations to release their statements to the plaintiff.

[17] In the recent decision in Maximum Ventures Inc. v. De Graaf, 2007 BCCA 510, Mr. Justice Mackenzie discussed the test for maintaining privilege between parties at paragraph 14:

Recent jurisprudence has generally placed an increased emphasis on the protection from disclosure of solicitor-client communications, including those shared in furtherance of a common commercial interest.  In the instant case the [solicitor’s] draft was produced within the recognized solicitor-client privileged relationship.  The common interest privilege issues arise in response to a plea of waiver of that privilege.  The common interest privileges is an extension of the privilege attached to that relationship.  The issue turns on whether the disclosures were intended to be in confidence and the third parties involved had a sufficient common interest with the client to support extension of the privilege to disclosure to them….Where legal opinions are shared by parties with mutual interests in commercial transactions, there is a sufficient interest in common to extend the common interest privilege to disclosure of opinions obtained by one of them to the others within the group, even in circumstances where no litigation is in existence or contemplated.

[18] And, at paragraph 16, Mackenzie, J.A. made the following finding:

The interests of the clients of the three solicitors were not identical but they were common to the extent that financing of the Western exploration of the Mongolian properties was beneficial to all of them.  They also shared an interest in assessing the invalidity of Maximum’s claims.

[19] The defendants maintain that even though two of the defendants have signed authorizations addressed to counsel for the defendants directing that their statements be released to counsel for the plaintiff, they cannot, in these circumstances, create a waiver over the common interest privilege by so doing.

[20] In my view, that argument begs the question for two reasons.  Firstly, were the persons from whom the statements taken to request copies of their statements, surely they would be entitled to receive copies of them as no privilege attaches to one’s own statement in the hands of a third party?  It would then be open to each of those parties to deliver a copy of their statements directly to the plaintiff.  Secondly, the defendant, Paterson, has issued third party proceedings against the four individual motorboat defendants for which he seeks judgment against the motorboat defendants, or indemnity from them in the event a judgment is rendered against Paterson.

[21] The Third Party Notice contains the following allegations:

a. The plaintiff’s windsurfer struck the port side of the motorboat;

b. The motorboat defendants represented that Arvinder Kaler would be the person operating the motorboat;

c. While Paterson does not know who was operating the boat at the time of the accident, it has been represented to Paterson that Sukhbir Brar was operating the motorboat at the time of the accident; and

d. the accident was caused solely by the negligence of the operators of the motorboat.

[22] In the circumstances, two things are apparent.  One, that the allegations made in the Third Party Notice are likely the result of information gleaned from the motorboat defendants, and, two, the defendant, Paterson, alleges the accident was caused solely by the negligence of the motorboat defendants, which creates the question: where is the commonality of interest between the renter defendants and the motorboat defendants such that a privilege continues to exist over the statements taken from the motorboat defendants?

[23] In my view, by the very nature of the Third Party Notice and the allegations made in it, there has been a severing of the commonality of interest of the defendants.  In the result, therefore, there is no common interest privilege which can be maintained, and, accordingly, the statements taken from the four motorboat defendants are no longer privileged and must be turned over to the plaintiff.

BC Personal Injury Claims and Document Disclosure

Very important reasons for judgement were released today by the BC Court of Appeal dealing with the duties of counsel when it comes to listing privileged documents in BC Supreme Court Lawsuits.
In today’s case (Stone v. Ellerman) the Plaintiff was injured in a 2002 BC car crash.  Her case proceeded to trial and she was awarded almost $700,000 in damages.  The defendants appealed and today the BC Court of Appeal ordered a new trial on the basis that the trial was ‘fundamentally flawed when, partway through the plaintiff’s evidence in chief, and over the objection of the defence, the plaintiff was permitted to use a pain journal‘.   The reason why this created a ‘fundamentally flawed‘ trial was because the pain journal was not properly identified by the plaintiff’s lawyer.
Rule 26 deals with disclosure obligations in most BC Supreme Court lawsuits and subrule 26(2.1) requires that “the nature of any document for which privilege from production is claimed must be described in a manner that, without revealing information that is privileged, will enable parties to assess the validity of the claim of privilge‘.
In the course of the claim the Plaintiff’s lawyer advised her to keep a pain journal, something often done in personal injury cases.  In listing the document as privileged it was described as “notes and documents, correspondence, minutes of evidence, memoranda being the work product of plaintiff’s legal advisers“. The trial judge held that this document was not properly disclosed, however, permitted the Plaintiff’s memory to be ‘refreshed’ at trial with this document.
The Defendants appealed and succeeded.  In granting a new trial the BC Court of Appeal gave the most comprehensive summary of this area of the law that I’m aware of.  Specifically, the court said the following with respect to lawyers disclosure obligations of privileged documents under Rule 26:

[21] The first question to be addressed is whether the pain journal was adequately described for purposes of Rule 26(2.1) by “notes and documents, correspondence, minutes of evidence, memoranda being the work product of plaintiff’s legal advisers”.

[22] It is clear that it was not. Nothing in that description would “enable other parties to assess the validity of the claim of privilege” (Rule 26(2.1)), or to anticipate that anything like a pain journal existed among the “notes and documents”, even in the most general terms.

[23] The information that must be included in the description of a document over which privilege is claimed will vary depending upon the document, but it must be sufficiently described so that if the claim is challenged it can be considered by a judge in chambers: Babcock v. Canada (Attorney General), 2004 BCSC 1311, 246 D.L.R. (4th) 549, citing Visa International Service Assn. v. Block Bros. Realty Ltd. (1983), 64 B.C.L.R. (2d) 390 (C.A.).

[24] In Saric v. Toronto-Dominion Bank, 1999 BCCA 459, Mr. Justice Hall, in chambers, cited Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club v. Uniguard Services Ltd. and Chahal (1986), 1 B.C.L.R. (2d) 309 (C.A.), for the proposition that the grounds for privilege have to be established in respect of each document which is said to be privileged.  He added (at para. 12) “a litigant, (and presumably the court), has to have some proper basis upon which to determine issues of privilege as they relate to documents”.

[25] It has been held that since Rule 26(2.1) came into force in mid-1998 the “bundling” of documents under a broad description is no longer sufficient and that each document must be listed separately.  In Leung v. Hanna (1999), 68 B.C.L.R. (3d) 360 (S.C.), solicitor-client privilege was claimed over documents that were described as “documents marked P3 [through P10], the same having been initialled by the handling solicitor”. Mr. Justice Burnyeat found that each document had been listed separately as the new sub-rule required.  He found that the descriptions themselves otherwise satisfied the requirements articulated in Hodgkinson v. Simms (1988), 33 B.C.L.R. (2d) 129, under the old rule, which permitted quite generic descriptions in favour of protecting privileged information. Burnyeat J. held that such descriptions – now of individual documents – remained sufficient under the new rule.

[26] In Bajic v. Friesen, 2006 BCSC 1290, a master in chambers explained the decision in Leung this way:

[3]        It is clear from the decision of Mr. Justice Burnyeat that the sanctity, if you will, of solicitor/client privilege in his mind trumps any attempt to describe documents in part 3 such that they provide any conceivable understanding to the other party as to the nature of the document. It would appear it then forces a party concerned with the description or lack of same in part 3 to bring an application to the court which then leaves the judge or master hearing the matter to review the document and then conclude whether or not it is appropriately within part 3.

[27] Some authority supports the proposition that where the privilege claimed is not solicitor-client privilege but rather litigation privilege, as in this case, the premium placed on protecting the information is lower and the description must be more detailed to facilitate challenge.  In Hetherington v. Loo, 2007 BCSC 129, Master Caldwell distinguished Leung v. Hanna on the basis that it dealt exclusively with solicitor-client privilege.  He reasoned as follows:

[8]        …The present case deals with a claim of privilege based upon the “dominant purpose of litigation” test and protection. While information such as the date and author’s identity may well be protected from disclosure under a claim of solicitor-client privilege, such protection is not necessarily afforded claims of privilege based upon the dominant purpose test. The latter protection is less absolute, more fact driven and subject to challenge. In the recent case of Blank v. Canada (Minister of Justice), [2006] S.C.J. No. 39, Fish J. said at [paragraph] 60:

the litigation privilege should be viewed as a limited exception to the principle of full disclosure and not as an equal partner of the broadly interpreted solicitor-client privilege. The dominant purpose test is more compatible with the contemporary trend favouring increased disclosure.

[9]        And at [paragraph] 61:

While the solicitor-client privilege has been strengthened, reaffirmed and elevated in recent years, the litigation privilege has had, on the contrary, to weather the trend toward mutual and reciprocal disclosure which is the hallmark of the judicial process.

[10]      In order that proper assessment may be made as to the propriety of a claim of litigation or dominant purpose privilege it is necessary that sufficient particulars of the documents be given. In most cases dealing with documents involving adjusters files and certainly in this case, particulars as to date and author must be provided. When dealing with interview notes, transcripts, and statements, it may also be necessary to identify if not the actual subject, at least the category of subject (e.g. eyewitnesses, home-care worker, etc.) involved.

[28] Snow v. Friesen, 2008 BCSC 1664, is to the same effect.

[29] In this case, the pain journal is properly to be treated as within the lawyer’s brief, or litigation privilege.  The description in the plaintiff’s affidavit of documents failed to provide any information that would have made the defendants aware of a document in the “category of subject” of the pain journal or enabled them to assess the validity of the claim of privilege.  It follows that for the purposes of Rule 26(14) the plaintiff failed to make discovery of the pain journal “as required by this rule”.

[30] Nondisclosure notwithstanding, the judge retained the discretion to permit the use of the pain journal for the purposes of the plaintiff’s examination-in-chief.  Factors basic to the exercise of this discretion are whether the defendants would suffer prejudice if the use of the journal was permitted, and whether there was a reasonable explanation for the plaintiff’s failure to disclose it.

[31] Other factors relevant to the exercise of the discretion are whether excluding the document would prevent the determination of the issue on its merits: Hoole v. Advani, [1996] B.C.J. No. 522; and whether, in the circumstances of the case, the ends of justice require that the document be admitted: Jones, Gable & Co. v. Price (1977), 5 B.C.L.R. 103; Wu v. Sun, 2006 BCSC 1890; and Adamson v. Charity, 2007 BCSC 671.

[32] In Carol v. Gabriel (1997), 14 C.P.C. (4th) 376, Mr. Justice Henderson excluded a surreptitiously recorded videotape of an independent medical examination.  He said:

[9]        A party tendering a previously undisclosed document must establish to the court’s satisfaction a justification for the failure to abide by Rule 26(14). The question of whether the opposite party will be prejudiced by the admission of the document is always relevant but is not, in and of itself, decisive. Even in cases where no prejudice will ensue from the admission in evidence of the document, it will be excluded unless there is a reasonable justification for the earlier failure to disclose it. To hold otherwise would be to dilute the disclosure obligation and tempt counsel to refrain from disclosing in situations where they do not expect any prejudice to result.

[33] Mr. Justice Henderson found that the defendant would not be prejudiced in any way by the admission of the videotape, because the alleged discrepancies between the tape and the report were minor and would not have affected his assessment of the doctor’s credibility.  However, he ruled the tape inadmissible in the absence of any reasonable justification for failing to disclose it earlier.

[34] This approach has been followed in subsequent cases: see Ball v. Gap (Canada) Inc., 2001 BCSC 824, 8 C.P.C. (5th) 258; Golden Capital Securities Ltd. v. Holmes, 2002 BCSC 516; Sturzenegger (c.o.b. Zurich Trucking) v. K. Peters Industries Northern Ltd., 2003 YKSC 72; Kursar v. BCAA Insurance Corp., 2006 BCSC 586; and Wu v. Sun, 2006 BCSC 1890.

[35] It appears that the judge failed entirely to consider whether there was any reasonable explanation for the plaintiff’s failure to comply with the disclosure rule.  The law leaves no doubt that this is a central factor to be considered, nor any doubt that the fact that a document may be subject to lawyers’ brief privilege or litigation privilege does not provide a reasonable explanation for failing to disclose it in accordance with the requirements of Rule 26: Hoole v. Advani, and Ball v. Gap (Canada) Inc. (both supra).

[36] In Golden Capital Securities Ltd. v. Holmes (supra), the plaintiff claimed litigation privilege over some tape recordings made by a witness to a conversation between the witness and the defendants.  The tapes and transcripts thereof were not provided by the plaintiff to defendants’ counsel until just before the witness appeared to testify, some seven days after the trial commenced.  The plaintiff sought to have them admitted into evidence.

[37] Applying Carol v. Gabriel (supra), and noting that the burden was on the plaintiff, the judge sought a reasonable explanation for the lack of timely disclosure.  The judge rejected as a reasonable explanation the claim that the recordings were subject to litigation privilege.  While prejudice was not required to be found in order to rule the documents inadmissible, the judge found that in this case there was potential prejudice.  The defendants missed the opportunity to examine the recordings, prepare objections that might be proper, discover and respond to any problems with the recordings themselves and were unable to cross-examine witnesses who had already testified about the content of the recordings.  The judge noted that the content of the recordings had been the subject of the witness’s testimony so the plaintiff was not deprived of the opportunity to put that aspect of his case before the court.  The witness would have had to testify from memory had he not recorded the conversations or had the tapes been lost, and so the plaintiff had the benefit of the tapes to the extent of having had his memory refreshed by them.  The tapes were excluded from evidence.

[38] In my view, there was in the case at bar significant prejudice to the defence in being refused the opportunity to make a full and reasoned objection to the late production of this document.  Had the document been disclosed in a timely way, it would have undoubtedly affected defence counsel’s preparation for trial.

[39] If the pain journal had been identified in the plaintiff’s list of documents in a manner that complied with Rule 26(2.1), the defence would have been able “to assess the validity of the claim for privilege”.  If not satisfied that the document was properly protected by the claim of litigation privilege, the defence could have applied under Rule 26(8) to compel production of the document for inspection.  Upon being satisfied that the document was not privileged, the court could have ordered its production for inspection and copying under Rule 26(10). If the claim for privilege had been maintained, the defence would have known of the document’s existence, if not its content. Knowledge of its existence might well have affected settlement negotiations and would have enabled defence counsel to anticipate the document’s possible presentation at trial.

[40] With respect to contrary opinion, it is no answer to non-compliance with Rule 26 to argue that the pain journal was not used for an improper purpose at trial, or that the defence chose to cross-examine on its contents.  Those considerations are quite irrelevant to the questions of whether there was non-compliance with the rule, whether there was prejudice to the defence, and whether the judge exercised his discretion judicially.

[41] Nor is it any answer to suggest that the plaintiff was not required to produce the document until privilege was waived.  That argument ignores entirely the other provisions of Rule 26, which enable opposing counsel to challenge the claim for privilege before trial.

[42] The object of the discovery rules is to prevent trial by ambush.  The object of the Rules in general is “… to secure the just, speedy and inexpensive determination of every proceeding on its merits” (Rule 1(5)).  Discovery of documents that fails to comply with the Rules is antithetical to these ends.

[43] The judge appears to have given little or no consideration to the prejudice suffered by the defence.

[44] It is unfortunate that the trial judge did not avail himself of defence counsel’s offer to provide authorities on how the judge should exercise his discretion in the circumstances.  Defence counsel was obviously taken by surprise at the production of the pain journal in the midst of the plaintiff’s evidence in chief.  It was entirely reasonable for defence counsel to seek an opportunity to research and consider the law before making submissions to the court, and it may well have been of considerable assistance to the court.

[45] The pain journal proved to be of central importance to the plaintiff’s evidence.  As the judge observed in ruling its use permissible “her memory of events isn’t good” and without something to prompt her she “is unable to give me any of the detail that makes up the total picture.  What she gives me is conclusory opinions”.

[46] The proposition that keeping a pain journal on counsel’s advice is sufficiently common practice as to exempt such a journal from the disclosure rules is unsupported by any authority. The judge’s suggestion that one ought to assume that a pain diary is being kept in all personal injury litigation is also inconsistent with the fact that the burden of providing a reasonable explanation falls squarely on the party who has failed to make disclosure in accordance with the rules.

[47] It may be apparent in retrospect that it was necessary for the plaintiff to refer to her pain diary in order to recall events long past, and it is arguable that to have prevented her from doing so may have interfered with the proper decision of the issues at trial on their merits and with full information.  However, permitting use of the document with no notice to the defence gave the plaintiff an unfair advantage.

[48] One cannot say with certainty that the judge would have reached a different conclusion on the use of the pain diary if he had considered all relevant factors, in particular whether there was a reasonable explanation for the delay in its disclosure.  However, the simple claim that the document was subject to litigation privilege is not an explanation, and no other explanation was presented to the judge.

[49] In the absence of a reasonable explanation for the late disclosure, and without an adequate consideration of the issue of prejudice, the judge ought not to have permitted the use of the diary.

[50] In my respectful opinion, permission to use the document in the circumstances described amounted to a miscarriage of justice.

[51] I would allow the appeal, set aside the judgment and order a new trial.

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