A week ago Law360, a LexisNexis newsletter, reported that a Florida law firm and its principal attorney had sued a unit of AIG, an insurance carrier, for allegedly \u201cmisleading them into defending a sports memorabilia collector and his company\u201d in an SEC investigation that resulted in charges.\u00a0 The item helpfully named the case and linked to a copy of the complaint.<\/p>\n
In the complaint the plaintiff law firm and lawyer, who are representing themselves, identified the client by initials only as MK, stating that \u201cproviding the initials is proper for the present pleading, considering the ongoing active criminal and related civil proceedings regarding that person who needs legal representation.\u201d\u00a0 The AIG unit had hired the plaintiffs to represent and defend a husband and wife in the underlying investigation.\u00a0 Throughout the complaint the lawyers carefully refer to the husband only as \u201cMK\u201d and don\u2019t name MK\u2019s wife.\u00a0 The plaintiffs did state in the complaint that in addition to facing the SEC civil charges MK was a defendant in two criminal cases, both cited by case number. \u00a0The complaint describes MK\u2019s arrest and detention in Germany, his extradition to the United States, his detention in Nevada, and his eventual plea bargain.<\/p>\n
The exhibits to the complaint include an e-mail from AIG\u2019s outside counsel to MK and some invoices from the plaintiff to AIG.\u00a0 The plaintiffs redacted MK\u2019s name from the e-mail and redacted almost all of the substantive content from the invoices, including all mentions of MK’s name.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs did not, however, redact from the e-mail three mentions of MK\u2019s wife, whom the law firm was also representing.\u00a0 Two references are by Mrs. MK’s first name only; the third is by her full and uncommon name.\u00a0 Eleven of the first 12 Google results for searching for Mrs. MK’s full name disclose MK\u2019s name and the Ks’ legal troubles.<\/p>\n
Rule 4-1.6 of the Florida State Bar\u2019s rules of professional conduct states that \u201cA lawyer must not reveal information relating to a client\u2019s representation except as stated in subdivisions (b), (c), and (d), unless the client gives informed consent.\u201d\u00a0 (The Oregon State Bar\u2019s Rule 1.6 is nearly identical except for formatting.)<\/p>\n
Florida does not define the term \u201cinformation relating to a client\u2019s representation.\u201d\u00a0 Oregon does define its similar term, \u201cinformation relating to the representation of a client,\u201d to include not just privileged information (private attorney-client communications about the representation) but also any information that the lawyer gathers in the course of the representation \u201cthe disclosure of which would be embarrassing or would be likely to be detrimental to the client.\u201d\u00a0 Information doesn\u2019t cease to be embarrassing or detrimental just because it\u2019s available to members of the public who know where to look.<\/p>\n
The lawyers may have obtained the consent of MK and Mrs. MK to the disclosures that they made in their complaint against the Ks\u2019 insurer before they filed the complaint.\u00a0 The case is nevertheless a reminder to practitioners to beware of disclosing confidential or embarrassing information about a client, not just in memoranda, but in the exhibits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A week ago Law360, a LexisNexis newsletter, reported that a Florida law firm and its principal attorney had sued a unit of AIG, an insurance carrier, for allegedly \u201cmisleading them into defending a sports memorabilia collector and his company\u201d in an SEC investigation that resulted in charges.\u00a0 The item helpfully named the case and linked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-writing","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":386,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alterman.law\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}