Privilege - Recent Developments

The English High Court has recently handed down two judgments in relation to privilege and disclosure of documents. The first case of R (on the application of Ford) v Financial Services Authority involved a claim for joint interest privilege and the second, Stiedl v Enyo Law LLP and others, related to the ability of solicitors to continue acting in proceedings where they had undertaken a preliminary review of documents which included privileged documents.

Joint interest privilege

Facts

In R (on the application of Ford) v Financial Services Authority the Claimant claimed joint interest privilege over eight emails which were referred to in the FSA's Supplementary Investigation Report. The Report led to warning notices being issued to the Claimant (and other individuals, who were also Interested Parties in this case). The Claimant and the Interested Parties were executives of Keydata Investment Services Limited ("Keydata"), which was under investigation by the FSA. Keydata later went into administration. As the FSA's investigation progressed they requested the administrators of Keydata to provide certain documents, which included documents that were protected by legal advice privilege. The administrators waived the privilege and provided the documents. The disclosed documents included eight emails from Keydata's lawyers over which the Claimant was claiming...