- 8 -
Petitioners place heavy reliance on Sporck v. Peil, 759 F.2d
312 (3d Cir. 1985), a case in which the Court of Appeals for the
Third Circuit found that a selection and compilation of documents
was work product. Respondent contends that the facts in
petitioner’s case are distinguishable from Sporck. The question
in Sporck arose in connection with an attorney’s preparation for
a deposition of his client. That preparation included the
attorney’s selection of documents that were placed in a folder
for preparing the witness and for transportation to the situs of
the deposition.
The deposition documents in Sporck had been selected by the
attorney from a larger universe of more than 100,000 documents.
The 100,000 document universe had, in turn, been selected by the
attorney from a substantially larger universe of documents
(several hundred thousand documents) that had been produced in
response to discovery. It was conceded that the contents of the
documents did not contain work product. Further complicating the
circumstances in Sporck was the fact that the deponent stated
that he had examined documents in preparation for the deposition,
and the cross-examining attorney asked that the documents be
identified and produced.
The issue in Sporck was described as “whether the selection
process of defense counsel in grouping certain documents together
out of the thousands produced in this litigation is work
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011