Back in 2003 the EU's anti cartel investigators raided Akzo Nobel's offices here in Manchester and grabbed, among many other random documents you don't want lying round where anti cartel people can grab them, a bunch of papers containing advice from Nobel's In House lawyers.
Now the general consensus is that such documents are privileged and thus a typically painful ECJ level litigation was kicked off with hopes of getting a ruling to that effect.
Unfortunately (well unfortunate for the in house guys, sorta good for me) Juliane Kokott, ECJ Advocate General, released her preliminary opinion last week which essentially says that "no, your advice from In house lawyers does not enjoy privilege from disclosure that is normally applicable to communications with outside advisers".
Result for King! Swift mail shot to the contacts list mentioning the above and wait for the phone to start ringing.
To be continued……..
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ALWAYS BE NICE TO YOUR SECRETARY It’s only a few days later, after Gemma
has cleared the final detritus from my overflowing out tray, that I notice
the l...
Well to be honest the joy of inhouse is you never have to write anything anyway.. Just pontificate as someone passes your house.
ReplyDeleteIn reality, Kocott is great on the one hand and I am relying like feck on her on another matter, but this is mental for me. I am taking over litigation from expensive external lawyers so was already reading this like feck.
My gut says the ECJ will take a different line
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