Workforce Bulletin

Recently, in Lewis v. Crochet et al., the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rejected an attempt by a plaintiff to use the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege to compel two lawyers’ production of attorney-client privileged documents and information, which they obtained during the course of an investigation they conducted for Louisiana State University in 2013.

Lewis arose out of a lawsuit filed by the plaintiff, an African American woman formerly employed as an assistant athletic director for LSU, claiming that LSU and individual LSU board members discriminated and retaliated against her after she experienced and witnessed numerous instances of racist and sexist misconduct from LSU’s then-head football coach. The privilege dispute came to a head when plaintiff sought to compel LSU’s production of information from the 2013 Title IX investigation into sexual harassment allegations by LSU students against the then-head coach. Those documents remained in the possession of the law firm that conducted the investigation. Attempting to overcome LSU’s assertion of the attorney-client privilege, plaintiff invoked the crime-fraud exception arguing that LSU sought to use its lawyers to fraudulently conceal the documents in violation of Louisiana law prohibiting, among other things, the concealment of public records. The trial court agreed and ordered disclosure, but on an appeal filed by the two lawyers that conducted the 2013 investigation, the Fifth Circuit reversed.