Counsel Concerns

The Supreme Court of California decided that entertainer Bing Crosby's attorney-client privilege ended when Crosby died in 1977. HLC Properties Ltd. V. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County, S120332. HLC, the entity to which Crosby's business interests were transferred after his death, sued MCA Records and related companies in 2000, claiming underpayment of royalties from three Crosby recording contracts. During discovery, HLC refused to turn over 59 documents, many of which were between Crosby's attorneys and Crosby employees regarding a 1959-1960 royalty audit conducted on Crosby's behalf. The trial court ruled that the documents weren't privileged, but the California Court of Appeal found that HLC held the privilege as successor of Bing Crosby Enterprises, an unincorporated title for a loose collection of Crosby's various business ventures. Reversing, the state supreme court concluded that; “we do not suggest that entities formed to manage the business affairs of a natural person can never be clients or never hold attorney-client privileges in their own right. Nor do we find that a personal representative's assertion of the privilege categorically forecloses others from claiming it as to the same communications. But the [California] Evidence Code unmistakably provides that the attorney-client privilege belongs only to the client, whether the client is a natural person or a business entity, and the record here amply supports the trial court's determination that Crosby, not Enterprises, was the original client and holder of the privilege with respect to the 59 withheld documents. Under these circumstances, the Evidence Code compels us to find that, when Crosby died, his privilege transferred to the executor of his estate and thereafter ceased to exist upon the executor's discharge.”

Personal Jurisdiction Over Lawyers