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forced to seek the documents and information by means of
discovery.
Respondent’s discovery requests seek from petitioners the
documents that had been received from the prosecuting attorney,
along with copies of the electronic media data bases and/or the
CD ROM. Respondent also seeks to obtain the documents selected
by petitioner’s defense attorney. Petitioners refused to turn
over the requested documents.3 Petitioners contend that some of
the documents received from the prosecuting attorney have
annotations made by Mr. Hambarian’s defense counsel. Petitioners
point out that their cost to convert the documents to electronic
media was approximately $70,000. Respondent is seeking the
electronic data bases and the hard copy of the documents and has
offered to pay costs of reproduction.
Discussion
The question we consider here is whether the compilation of
documents and/or the creation of electronic data bases are
protected under the attorney work product doctrine which
originated in Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 511 (1947). The
3 Petitioners are represented in these consolidated cases by
different attorneys from those who represent petitioner, Jeffrey
Hambarian in the defense of his criminal indictment. Petitioners
raised the point that the requested documents and materials are
in the possession of Jeffrey Hambarian’s criminal defense
attorney and that petitioners and their Tax Court attorneys are
not in possession of the requested matter. We fail to understand
why that distinction should make any difference in our
consideration of the present discovery requests.
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