WMD and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan are co-lead counsel for the Plaintiffs in a Sherman Act antitrust case against Defendant Delta Dental insurance companies. In their Rule 26 automatic disclosures, certain Defendants identified their in-house counsel, who also serves as a business executive, as a person with knowledge of Defendants’ organizational structure, among other things. But when Plaintiffs noticed his deposition, the Enterprise Defendants moved to quash on the asserted ground that depositions of in-house lawyers are “presumptively disfavored as a matter of law” because they necessarily intrude upon the attorney-client relationship. Judge Bucklo of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied Defendants’ motion and ordered the deposition to go forward, agreeing with Plaintiffs that there is no blanket prohibition against deposing in-house counsel, and that the facts here suggest that the in-house counsel witness has discoverable, non-privileged information.
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