One of the more unwieldy of legal fictions is the so-called tripartite relationship among the insured, the insurer, and the defense counsel defending the insured against the claim. Duties run every which way in the relationship, and this beast is at its most cantankerous when one gets into the question of how the attorney client privilege fits in. In particular, if the insured and the insurer end up in a coverage dispute, the question of who has access to the communications between the insured and the defense counsel – just the insured, or also the insurer – quickly becomes a bone of contention.

I have talked before about the difficulty presented by this issue, and how it impacts insurance coverage and bad faith litigation. How exactly is an insurer to get at all the evidence of what happened in the underlying case, or at all of the facts that might shed light on whether or not the loss, in truth, is within the scope of coverage, if much of the evidence on that is laid out in the communications of the party who was actually on the scene – the lawyer litigating the case? A quick example highlights the problem. Suppose, for example, the issue presented is whether a settlement entered into by the insured was actually for losses within the scope of the coverage rather than just having been styled in that manner to try to place the loss within the coverage, and was actually paid for uncovered parts of the lawsuit. What more telling evidence could there be than the information communicated, orally and in writing, to the insured from the defense lawyer negotiating the settlement? After all, she is giving the advice on the settlement and structuring its terms – so if there is a question of whether the settlement is actually covered, shouldn’t that evidence both be admissible and discoverable?

Would seem so, but that isn’t necessarily the law. Which leads me to the real point of today’s post, which is to recommend Marc Mayerson’s review of the case law on this question.