Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

Re: Attorney work product

You have to file a motion to compel otherwise you can not bar it as evidence. You have a limited time to file your motion, but an obligation to meet and confer before bringing your motion.

Re: Attorney work product

You can demand that they produce a privilege log, which will describe what the document is, when it was created and why they claim it is not discoverable. The privilege log will not reveal the content of the document but hopefully will give you an idea of what it is.

Ordinarily, you cannot force the other side to turn over documents that are privileged or which qualify as work product. There are exceptions re: privileged documents, and your message suggests that one of the exceptions might apply here. If a party puts a privileged document "at issue" (in other words, makes its contents directly relevant to the litigation) it can be forced to either disclose the document or concede the issues to which the document relates.

This involves a relatively complex motion, which you might want to entrust to an attorney if at all possible. There are time limitations and other requirements that must be met beforehand, so do not delay on this.

Re: Attorney work product

Roth and Hoffman gave the best answers.

Re: Attorney work product

You should require them to inform you of what type of document it is to see if it is truly privileged before you file any motion to compel. Keep in mind that you have 45 days from the date the responses are recieved.

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