Brannock Berman & Seider Defeats Certiorari Bid

The Second District Court of Appeal rejected an effort by a Catholic priest to compel attorneys for a sexual-abuse victim to turn over protected work-product information in a civil lawsuit filed by the victim.

The victim alleges that he was raped as a child by the priest. Others have accused the same priest of similar sexual abuse. After suing for battery, negligence, and other torts, the victim hired private investigators to look into the other allegations against the priest. The priest moved to compel the victim to disclose what the investigators found, including the names and addresses of any other victims. While acknowledging that he would turn this information over if he intended to use it at trial, the victim objected to disclosing it before the priest’s deposition. The trial court denied the priest’s motion, and he sought review of that ruling in the Second District.

Brannock Berman & Seider was hired to help the victim’s trial lawyers with Mallard Perez respond to the priest’s appellate arguments. The priest’s primary point was that he was entitled to know the identity of the other victims before his deposition, so he could decide whether to plead the Fifth in response to deposition questions. The firm dispelled the priest’s legal arguments—explaining that information collected by investigators qualifies for work-product protection, and that the disclosure of this information had no impact on the priest’s ability to plead or not plead the Fifth—and also successfully argued that the priest could not show the kind of irreparable harm required for the appellate court to intervene in a pretrial discovery dispute anyway.

Following the extensive briefing, the Second District entered a per curiam dismissal of the petition, allowing the priest’s deposition to proceed.