PHOENIX (Legal Newsline) – A website that refers readers to plaintiffs lawyers has asked for a transfer of 3M’s bid to learn more about it.
Top Class Actions filed its motion Sept. 16 in Phoenix federal court, where 3M has asked a judge to force TCA to comply with requests for information about the site’s process of getting clients’ information to lawyers who filed lawsuits over 3M’s ear plugs.
TCA wants the judge overseeing the ear plug multidistrict litigation to decide the issue. There are more than 200,000 cases consolidated in Pensacola, Fla., that allege the ear plugs sold to the U.S. military were defective.
“3M’s Motion to Compel puts at issue significant questions concerning the relevancy and confidentiality of the requested records, as well as important privileges (including the attorney-client privilege and work product doctrines), which implicate the underlying MDL and would benefit from Judge Rodgers’ and Judge Jones’ expertise in this matter,” TCA’s lawyers wrote.
“Moreover, while TCA believes it has standing to assert the attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine herein, if this Court were to decide otherwise, such a finding would implicate the rights of numerous MDL plaintiffs not presently before the Court—all of whom would presumably need to intervene in these proceedings to assert their rights, despite the fact that all such plaintiffs, as well as 3M, are already parties to the MDL proceedings giving rise to the Subpoena in the first instance.”
Contact forms on TCA put readers in touch with a service to connect with plaintiffs lawyers. TCA says its communications with possible plaintiffs are protected by attorney-client privilege, despite the fact that it is not actually a law firm.
TCA’s site contains attorney advertising and articles written by TCA writers. Some pages have contact forms for potential clients whose information is passed on to firms that bought the ads.
The terms say “it is intended that the information will be protected by attorney-client privilege, but it is possible that Top Class Actions or such attorneys may be ordered by a court of law to produce such information in certain legal situations.”
TCA says attorney-client privilege applies to the records sought by 3M – that potential plaintiffs had a strong expectation their communications would be privileged.
3M’s original subpoena sought:
-Documents related to submissions to TCA’s website;
-Documents relating to the advertising directed to prospective plaintiffs;
-Communications between plaintiffs firms and TCA relating to prospective plaintiffs;
-Documents relating to the referral of prospective plaintiffs; and
-Documents regarding any financial interest or ownership any plaintiffs law firm has in TCA.