August 2, 2012

Well well what have we here

Some of the emails appear never to have been released before.

Wisconsin Republicans fought tooth and nail to keep this correspondence out of federal court, to the point of Eric McLeod being personally fined, and these emails went straight to the heart of the issues under litigation so it's difficult to believe they were overlooked, especially as they represent a contentious disagreement between the lead attorneys.

You thought those judges were pissed before.

Wait until they get a load of this.

7 comments:

Alex said...

Can you explain what exactly the three-judge panel can do, at this point?

Obviously, none of this stuff would change the constitutionality of the maps, so we are still stuck with them, right?

Does any of this even touch Scott Fitzgerald, or Robin Vos?

If the "worst/best" thing that could happen might be a couple of the attorneys being disbarred, it seems like that will probably be inside baseball for most people. I wish I was wrong about this, but that's what it looks like to me.

illusory tenant said...

Definitely inside baseball and you're right, these lawyers' grappling with the court ultimately had nothing to do with the substantive findings of the panel. I'd like to know a little more about the circumstances under which McLeod left Michael Best & Friedrich. It seems to me he wasn't exactly covering them in glory, for this and other reasons.

Anonymous said...

It was mentioned in one of the comments from the link that attorney-client privilege covers the e-mails in question. That is, Troupis and company were not legally bound to share their correspondence.

Is this reasonable to assume? Why?

Or did the lawyers have to disclose their conversations? Why?

Hope you have time to answer my inquiries. Thank you.

Greencarman2000

illusory tenant said...

Speaking of inside baseball, one of the Journal Sentinel commenters suggests these documents were attorney work product, as opposed to attorney-client privileged, but the story says the documents were shared among legislative aides, that is, the client. If I recall correctly the attorney-client privilege claims failed in federal court.

illusory tenant said...

Personally I think it should all be discoverable -- everything -- under these circumstances, where the clients are elected representatives redrawing electoral boundaries.

Anonymous said...

Not a lawyer. Not commenting on any specific facts or allegations.

I've read that privileges like attorney client and attorney work product can be complicated by many factors.

Inadvertant waiver and the crime fraud exception are two things that come to mind.

Both attorney work product and attorney client privilege can be subject to invalidation due to mistakes such as distributing to a person (staffer for example) not entitled to claim the privilege.

Potentially the participation by attorneys wearing more than one hat, and by other participants who are not attorneys, might make a difference in whether the work product privilege applies.

One might refer to THE ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE AND WORK PRODUCT IN THE POST ENRON ERA

illusory tenant said...

Of course you're right it's impossible to tell from the MJS story.