The Indianapolis Star reported yesterday:
The city's library and The Indianapolis Star squared off in court Wednesday over legal fees racked up as part of the newspaper's attempt to make library documents public. The Star wants the library to pay $8,600 in fees the newspaper incurred in a battle to obtain documents that detail how much Tabbert Hahn Earnest & Weddle charged the library for its legal work. The Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library used Tabbert to negotiate the legal morass triggered by construction problems discovered in the $102.7 million Central Library expansion. * * *I recalled the Star story this morning when I read this story, titled "Lawyers' Invoices Are Not Privileged Communications: Records must be produced upon subpoena, Pennsylvania appeals court rules." Some quotes about the law in Pennsylvania:Library attorneys countered that they always had intended to produce the documents and argued that taxpayers should not foot the bill of attorneys hired by a private company. "Part of our profession is to protect our attorney-client privilege," said library attorney Greg Hahn, explaining why the bills were reviewed and redacted before being released. "We've erred on the side of redaction."
Lawyers' billing invoices are not privileged attorney-client communications and must be produced when subpoenaed in a civil contempt hearing, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled Monday in a dispute over a guardian ad litem's fee request.Posted by Marcia Oddi at September 17, 2004 09:45 AM"The subpoenaed invoices are not privileged documents to the extent that they do not disclose confidential communications" between the attorneys and their client, Senior Judge Zoran Popovich wrote in Slusaw v. Hoffman.
If an invoice does refer to confidential communications, those references may be redacted, the three-judge panel concluded.