California Court of Appeal

A petition for writ of mandate after the superior court granted defendants' motion to compel discovery responses over petitioner-plaintiff's assertion of attorney-client privilege is granted, where: 1) petitioner's duties and powers, as an owner's association pursuing a lawsuit involving construction defects in the common areas of a development, include communicating with those parties who have closely aligned common interests, and the individual homeowners at the development (who maintained a separate lawsuit) have such common interests in this particular context; 2) these circumstances show that petitioner and its counsel, and the individual homeowners who participated in the litigation meetings, maintained a reasonable expectation that information to be disclosed about the status of the litigation was confidential in nature; 3) the record supports the conclusion that it was "reasonably" necessary to the purpose of petitioner's attorney retention for such disclosures to be made at the subject meetings, to the individual homeowners; and thus, 4) the trial court erred in granting defendants' motion to compel deposition answers from individual homeowners about the content and strategies disclosed to them by the petitioner or its counsel at the litigation update meetings.

Appellate Information

• Decided 03/12/2014
• Published 03/12/2014

Judges

• HUFFMAN

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel