Common Interest Agreements New York

New York, however, is not the only state with a more close interest in the doctrine of the common interest than the federal courts. The North Carolina Court of Appeals decided Friday Investments, LLC v. Bally Total Fitness of the Mid-Atlantic, Inc., et al., just two days before Ambac. See, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no COA15-822, 2016 WL 3172370, at No.1 (N.C Ct. App. June 7, 2016). The court also rejected the argument that limiting the litigation exception “will create an abnormal result: clients who keep lawyers separate … Cannot protect their joint communications without pending litigation, but the same communications, made without litigation, would be privileged if [they] had simply hired a single lawyer to represent them in a non-similar context. Id. at 630-31. The court justified this decision by the fact that “[t]he common client or client … clients share, in a non-exhaustive manner, a complete orientation of interests so that the lawyer can represent both parties ethically. There is therefore no doubt that clients will share a common identity and that all common communications will advance this common representation.

Id. to 631 (quote omitted). But if clients keep lawyers separate to represent them in a matter of common legal interest, that is not the case. “It is less likely that the positions of the clients represented separately will be coordinated so that counsel acts as counsel for all, and the difficulty of determining whether clients represented separately share a sufficiently common legal interest becomes even more blunt outside the context of ongoing or expected litigation.” “Therefore, according to the Court, a limitation of the law is not necessary if the very fact of common representation alone is often sufficient to establish a congruence of interests, but it serves as a valuable protection against the separate parties who try to protect the communications exchanged against disclosure on the basis of an alleged commonality of legal interests. , but have only commercial or commercial interests to protect.” Id.