Court Orders Production of Documents That Corporation under SEC Investigation Claimed to Be Privileged

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sidney I. Schenkier ordered the production of a second set of documents that an international corporation claimed were privileged in response to subpoenas from the SEC. The SEC investigation alleged possible fraud relating to statements made by the corporation regarding its efforts to obtain a certificate of conformity from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certifying that its engines complied with certain provisions of the Clean Air Act. In an Application for an Order Compelling Compliance with Administrative Subpoenas ("Application"), the SEC claimed that the corporation "produced many documents in response to the Commission's subpoenas, but it also . . . redacted and withheld other documents on privilege grounds." The SEC asked that the court overrule the corporation's privilege claims over certain documents that the SEC found to "involve lobbying and communications firms retained by the corporation, communications among only non-attorneys and draft documents."

In response to the Application, the court overruled the corporation's assertions of privilege to 51 documents in their entirety and to parts of 19 additional documents, but sustained the corporation's assertions of privilege to 15 documents in their entirety in orders issued on June 30, 2015 and August 31, 2015.