Last Spring, shortly before being nominated to the Supreme Court, D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh issued an opinion that protects the confidentiality of internal communications between company employees and in-house attorneys. His opinion in Federal Trade Commission v. Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 892 F.3d 1264 (2018), holds that the attorney-client privilege applies to an internal corporate communication to or from in-house counsel even if it serves a business purpose — as long as obtaining or providing legal advice also was a significant purpose of the communication. My article, In-House Counsel “Multi-Purpose” Communications Shielded from FTC Probe, which appears in the Fall 2018 edition of DRI’s In-House Defense Quarterly magazine, discusses now-Justice Kavanaugh’s lucid opinion in greater detail.
Kavanaugh Opinion Protects Internal Corporate Communications
