Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog

A Feb. 17 federal court ruling has found that neither the attorney-client privilege nor work product protection apply to a criminal defendant’s self-directed prompts and large language model outputs.  In the ruling in USA v. Heppner, US District Judge Jed S. Rakoff ordered the production of 31 documents generated by the defendant using Anthropic’s Claude, notwithstanding that the defendant had incorporated information obtained from counsel and later shared the AI outputs with his attorneys. In a recent legal update, Hunton partner Meghan Podolny and associate Jessie Purtell discuss how the ruling provides early judicial guidance on privilege issues related to AI-generated materials, an area with limited existing case law.

Although the ruling occurred in a criminal proceeding, the reasoning should apply equally across all litigation.  The ruling could therefore have serious implications for policyholders in coverage litigation and mandates a cautionary approach to client-guided “research” using open ai models.

When facing a crisis, such as product recall or a cyber attack, companies routinely engage third-party consultants. When doing so, there are potential privilege issues involved. Hunton Andrews Kurth insurance attorneys Syed Ahmad and Adriana A. Perez discuss these privilege issues in an article published by Westlaw. The full article is available here. In the article, the authors discuss the recent decision in Stardock Systems Inc. v. Reiche, which explores when communications with third-party consultants, such as public relations professionals, are ...

In an article recently featured in FC&S Legal, Hunton & Williams insurance lawyers Syed Ahmad and Patrick McDermott discuss ways to guard against waiver of the attorney-client privilege when cooperating with insurers providing Representations & Warranties insurance coverage. The full article can be found here.

On February 22^nd, Hunton insurance team partner Syed Ahmad and Mary Borja of Wiley Rein LLP will be speaking at the DC Bar’s CLE program “What Every Litigator Should Know About Insurance and How It May Impact Your Case Strategy.” The two hour class will discuss what steps an insured should take to protect claims, the role of insurance in defending and settling claims, and how to preserve attorney-client privileges. To learn more about the event, please visit: http://bit.ly/2k8SCQT.

Date and Time:
Wednesday, February 22, 2017 from 6 pm to 8:15 pm

Location:
D.C. Bar Conference ...