Ann represents Officer Patty in an employment discrimination case against City Police Department
(“Department”) in which Patty alleges that Department refused to promote her and other female
police officers to positions that supervise male police officers. Bob represents Department.
At Patty’s request, Ann privately interviewed a male police captain, Carl, who had heard the Chief
of Police (Chief) make disparaging comments about women in Department. Carl told Ann that Chief
has repeatedly said that he disapproves of women becoming police officers, routinely assigns them
clerical work, and would personally see to it that no female officer would ever supervise any male
officer. Carl met with Ann voluntarily during his non-work hours at home. Ann did not seek Bob’s
consent to meet with Carl or invite Bob to be present at Carl’s interview.
When Bob saw Carl’s name as a trial witness on the pretrial statement, he asked Chief to prepare a
memo to him summarizing Carl’s personnel history and any information that could be used to
discredit him. Chief produced a lengthy memo containing details of Carl’s youthful indiscretions. In
the memo, however, were several damaging statements by Chief reflecting his negative views about
female police officers. In the course of discovery, Bob’s paralegal inadvertently delivered a copy of
Chief s memo to Ann. Immediately upon opening the envelope in which the memo was delivered, Ann
realized that it had been sent by mistake. At the same time, Bob’s paralegal discovered and advised
Bob what had happened. Bob promptly demanded the memo’s retum, but Ann refused, intending to
use it at trial.
Please answer the following questions:
- Did Ann commit any ethical violation by interviewing Carl? Discuss.
- What are Ann’s ethical obligations with respect to Chief s memo? Discuss.
- At trial, how should the court rule on objections by Bob to the admission of Chief s
memo on the grounds of attomey-client privilege and hearsay? Discuss.
