American National Bank & Trust Co. v. Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States

MANION, Circuit Judge.

The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States invoked the attorney-client privilege to protect a large number of documents during discovery and used a privilege log to inform its opponent, Emerald Investments LP, of the documents being withheld. On Emerald’s motion, however, a magistrate judge struck Equitable’s entire privilege log as a discovery sanction because Equitable left five non-privileged documents on its log, which included more than 400 documents. The sanction forced Equitable to disclose all the log documents irrespective of whether the…