In Ardon v. City of Los Angeles, the Supreme Court today holds that a governmental entity’s inadvertent release of privileged documents in response to a Public Records Act request does not waive attorney-client or work product privileges as to those documents. The unanimous opinion by Justice Ming Chin (who also authored the court’s other opinion filed today) concludes “it is doubtful the Legislature intended to enact a statutory scheme that would prevent government agencies from minimizing the damage caused by the inadvertent disclosure of private and confidential information.”
The Ardon opinion includes an interesting practice point. Settlements sometimes will and sometimes won’t stop the court from issuing an opinion in a case. Ardon is one of the “won’ts.” The court wasn’t told about an impending settlement until the plaintiff did so and also asked for a stay after the defendant had filed its opening brief on the merits. The court denied the stay request and today notes that “[s]ettling the underlying lawsuit would not make this separate dispute moot.”
The opinion reverses the Court of Appeal, Second District, Division Six.
