Raytheon Co. v. Superior Court

This is a proceeding in mandate. Petitioner Raytheon Company (Raytheon) seeks review of a discovery order of the superior court which granted the motion of plaintiffs and real parties in interest Renault & Handley Employees Investment Co., Raymond G. Handley, Milla C. Handley, Y. A. Tittle, Minette Tittle, Carolyn Handley Gillen, Jeffrey Handley, and Mary Robins (collectively Renault), to compel production of documents. Raytheon claims these documents are protected by the attorney-client and work product privileges, respectively. In the underlying action, Renault sued Raytheon and other defendants (including Intel Corporation) for contract and tort claims related to the toxic condition of sites located in Mountain View, California. Raytheon and others are alleged to have contributed in varying degrees to this toxic condition. The court ruled that Raytheon must produce certain so-called “circulated documents” because they had been shown to “adversarial” codefendants. Raytheon claimed attorney-client and work product privilege as to these documents, without specifying what privilege applies to each document.

The trial court herein ruled that Raytheon has waived all claims…