Maintaining Florida's work product privilege.

After hearing testimony from both parties and allowing the production of the incident report to the plaintiff, the trial court found that the plaintiff had completed the incident report for which the defendant was claiming work product privilege. However, the trial court found that the defendant had “waived” the work product privilege due to an inconsistency between an assistant manager’s affidavit and her later testimony regarding who took the photographs at the scene, changing her testimony regarding who actually took the photographs. 

The Third District Court of Appeals found that the defendant did not waive the work product privilege where the photographs were taken by an employee of the defendant, even though the details of who took the photographs had changed, and the plaintiff failed to show need and undue hardship regarding the photographs. 

The practical implications here in maintaining work product privilege is to ensure proper documentation of privileged materials and privilege logs and to maintain the significantly higher burden of production for privileged information than that of mere relevancy. 
 

^{Case Law Alerts, 1st Quarter, January 2022 is prepared by Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin to provide information on recent developments of interest to our readers. This publication is not intended to provide legal advice for a specific situation or to create an attorney-client relationship. Copyright © 2022 Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin, all rights reserved. This article may not be reprinted without the express written permission of our firm.}