Chubb & Son v. Superior Court

Attorney Tracy Lemmon filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against her law firm employer, as well as against petitioner Chubb & Son, a division of Federal Insurance Company (Chubb), whose insureds she represented. In response to Lemmon’s request for documents relevant to her job performance, Chubb withheld documents (or redacted them) on the ground they contain privileged or confidential information of the third parties for whom Lemmon provided legal services. Further, Chubb insisted, the parties could not disclose any of the third parties’ privileged information even to their own attorneys in this case. The trial court ordered that the documents in each party’s possession could be disclosed to their respective attorneys, and required Chubb to provide its responsive documents to its attorneys to ascertain whether the material was privileged and to comply with its discovery obligations.

Chubb petitions for a writ of mandate, contending the court’s order improperly impinges on the attorney-client privilege and the attorney duty to maintain client confidences. More specifically, Chubb urges that the order impermissibly created an implied exception to the…