A plaintiff suing James River Insurance Company was also granted his motion for protective order in a case over a subpoena for his former lawyer.
Magistrate Judge William Matthewman made the ruling at U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on March 20.
The key factor of the lawsuit was production of documents connected to the law firm (not party to the suit) Fenstersheib Law Group, P.A. over its representation of plaintiff Amadou Sow in a car accident claim. Fenstersheib served as counsel from the month of the accident, March 2016 to June of 2019, when Sow parted ways with Fenstersheib and hired Goldman & Daskal, P.A., which is still his counsel now. Sow then filed a lawsuit in a Florida state court on June 21, 2019, which is still pending.
The case is unique as Sow subpoenaed Fenstersheib for court documents.
“This is a case where plaintiff subpoenaed his own privileged documents from his prior attorney,” wrote Judge Matthewman. “Rule 26.1(i) does not require production of the documents received by plaintiff which plaintiff claims are protected by attorney-client privilege and work product productions.”
Still, the court did determine that Sow forfeited the attorney-client privilege concerning the documents when he subpoenaed Fenstersheib in light of the “at issue” waiver policy.
Ultimately, the plaintiff’s motions to compel and for a protective order were granted.
The court denied the defendant’s motion to compel.