ABA-460
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| Despite some case law to the contrary, a lawyer's Rule 4.4(b) duty to advise the sender if the lawyer receives "inadvertently sent" documents does not arise if the lawyer's client gives the lawyer documents the client has retrieved "from a public or private place where [the document] is stored or left." A document is "inadvertently sent" when it is "accidentally transmitted to an unintended recipient, as occurs when an e mail or letter is misaddressed or when a document is accidentally attached to an e mail or accidentally included among other documents produced in discovery." For example, a lawyer representing an employer does not have such a disclosure duty if the employer retrieves and gives the lawyer privileged emails between an employee and the employee's lawyer that are stored on the employer's computer system. Such lawyers might face some duty or even punishment under civil procedure rules or court decisions, but the ethics rules "do not independently impose an ethical duty to notify opposing counsel" in such situations. In fact, the employer client's possession of such employee documents is a confidence that the employer's lawyer must keep, absent some other duty or discretion to disclose it. If there is no law requiring such disclosure, the employer client must decide whether to disclose its possession of such documents although "it often will be in an employer client's best interest to give notice and obtain a judicial ruling" on the admissibility of the employee's privileged communications before the employer's lawyer reviews the documents. |