February 2021 Bar Bulletin
By Treja Jones and Christopher Howard
The protection of attorney-client privilege in the corporate context historically has been limited to communications between a corporation’s attorney and that corporation’s authorized employees, and even then only when the communications were in confidence and made for the purpose of seeking or providing legal advice. A recent decision by the Washington Supreme Court has expanded the protection of the privilege, at least in the healthcare arena to include non-employee agents of a hospital.
In Hermanson v. Multicare Health Sys., Inc.,1 the Washington Supreme Court held that a defendant hospital’s attorney’s ex parte communications with one...