Westinghouse Electric Corp. v. Newman & Holtzinger

Westinghouse Electric Corp. attempts to state causes of action sounding in tort and breach of contract against attorneys who allegedly conspired to disclose documents covered by a secrecy agreement in a previous lawsuit. The trial court held the attempt failed. We agree.

Facts and Proceedings Below

Westinghouse was the defendant in a suit brought by the Southern California Edison Company (SCE) in federal court. The SCE suit alleged Westinghouse made false representations about steam generators it sold to the utility for use in its nuclear power facilities. SCE was represented in the federal court action by Newman & Holtzinger, P. C. (Newman), and Chase, Rotchford, Drukker & Bogust (Chase), defendants in the present action. The other defendant in the present action, Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge (Shaw), did not represent a party in the SCE suit but is alleged to have conspired with Newman and Chase to violate the secrecy agreement in that suit.

We summarize the Westinghouse complaint here and discuss it in more detail below.

Essentially the complaint alleges that in the course of the SCE suit Newman and Chase requested production from Westinghouse of certain highly…