Copying To Attorney Doesn’t Make An Email Privileged

The case arose in the context of an employment dispute, where the employee made discovery requests for three separate email chains. The court said the employee could see the first and third groups, but not the second. Quarles & Brady attorney Tina Eckert explains the court’s reasoning about how they differed, as it arrived at its essential holding that an email cannot be transformed into a privileged communication simply by copying an attorney. The case is Hamdan v. Indiana University Health North, LLC, et.al., in the Southern District of Indiana.