Court Concludes That Access To Privileged Document By Employees Without A "Need To Know" Does Not Destroy Privilege Protection

Many courts hold that corporations might waive their privilege protection through purely internal circulation of privileged communications — beyond those employees with a "need to know." This does not make much sense, because it hands over to corporations' external adversaries internal corporate communications disclosed only to employees with a fiduciary, contractual, or other duty to keep them confidential.

Although a few courts have extended this troublesome approach to situations in which other employees merely had access to privileged communications, other courts have drawn the line. In Garvey v. Hulu, LLC, Case No. 11-cv-03764-LB, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7042, at *7 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 21, 2015), the court rejected plaintiffs' argument "that confidentiality was destroyed by the fact that [privileged communications are] generally accessible to Hulu employees beyond those immediately participating" in the pertinent legal issue. The court noted that the privileged