No Privilege For Handwritten Notes

In a case out of federal court in Arizona, a litigant sued Greyhound Lines, Inc., over clean-up costs of some contaminated property that it had sold to the bus service, and was required to produce a document on which a lawyer had handwritten some notes. The litigant did not argue the document was privileged, but it did maintain the notes were. In a ruling that Todd Presnell in his Presnell on Privileges blog says in-house lawyers may find puzzling, the court denied the privilege request, in part on the grounds that the notes could not be construed as communications that would invoke the attorney-client privilege. The author considers what lessons this ruling holds for in-house attorneys, and what alternatives they might have in similar situations.