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more on Diebold Whistle-Blower, legal staff "stealing documents," and attorneys keeping quiet about crimes]
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 08:58:43 -0500
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: RE: [IP] more on Diebold Whistle-Blower, legal staff "stealing documents," and attorneys keeping quiet about crimes Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:48:55 -0500 From: Ethan Ackerman <eackerma () u washington edu> Reply-To: eackerma () u washington edu To: dave () farber net Greetings Dave, Chris, Rob & Jonathan brought up key points about how 'whistleblowing' is more murky when employees of a law firm disclose documents that are subject to the attorney-client privilege - BUT there is more to this that merits recognizing. Almost everyone agrees that getting legal advice to avoid (or stop) breaking the law is good, and that's part of why an attorney-client privilege is there. It would also be pointless to have a privilege if any employee of the lawyer could break it. BUT, on the other hand, this privilege, by law, doesn't extend indefinitely. Almost every state has some type of exception for the commission of crimes - generally, attorneys CAN break privilege to report contemplated crimes involving death or serious bodily injury, BUT in some states lawyers can break privilege for even lesser crimes. The American Bar Association, in August 2003, after many changes back and forth in various drafts, finally adopted a permissive “financial fraud” confidentiality exception to the Model Rules that it recommends each state pass. (This situation might have been different IF California had adopted this exception...) In California, where this took place, the relevant rule allows (BUT NOT requires) an attorney to break privilege if "necessary to prevent a criminal act " that is "likely to result in death or substantial bodily harm." So it looks like Jones Day attorneys couldn't have broken privilege even if they wanted to. On the other hand, in other states, the privilege may be broken by a lawyer to report ANY contemplated crime - for example, in Washington state, the attorney could have called the Attorney General if she believed it "reasonably necessary"..."to prevent the client from committing a crime." In this particular case, Jones Day attorneys began preparing defense for, and the California Secretary of State recommended, criminal charges against Diebold. So this isn't just an academic hypothetical... See http://www.yuricareport.com/Corporations/DieboldsSecretFears.html (for the privileged memos) and http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63191,00.html (for the Secretary of State's allegations of criminality) FYI, in the end, the Oakland Tribune was sued by Jones Day, but won and kept the memos up. The Calif. attorney general ultimately decided not to indict Diebold, but did sue it for fraud - Diebold settled for ~$3million. (Please don't take the above comments to be how I think the law on attorney-client privilege should be, I'm just sharing how it IS.) -Ethan Ackerman -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [IP] more on Diebold Voting Machine Whistle-Blower being prosecuted for "Stealing documents"]] Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 13:15:47 -0500 From: Chris Beck <cbeck () pacanukeha net> To: dave () farber net, Rob McMillin <scareduck () yahoo com> Rumour has it Dave Farber, on or about 28.Feb.2006 12:30, forwarded:
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 08:35:03 -0800 (PST) From: Rob McMillin <scareduck () yahoo com> And so what? Diebold was absolutely breaking the law, and in a way fundamentally destructive to our very way of government. Mr. Goldstein can go on all day about the law and its majesty, but at the end of the day, which is more corrosive to that same body of law he purports to hold dear: making possible widespread, easy, and undetectable voting fraud? Or getting evidence of this same published in the press?
The problem, Rob, is that there is scads of evidence of Diebold's malfeasance and wilful corruption of the election process, much of it previously downloaded from their own ftp servers. I would like to see them shot, skinned and fed to weasels as much as the next guy, but at the same time I want the legal process to be just as sacrosanct - and they are _both_ under heavy assault these days. It's also sad to say that newspaper he went to with the documents would not have published anything without them given the weight of evidence gathered by Bev Harris and other at blackboxvoting.org . [...] ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on Diebold Whistle-Blower, legal staff "stealing documents," and attorneys keeping quiet about crimes] Dave Farber (Mar 01)