On February 5, 2019, the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island found that an on-line wage-hour compliance training document is covered by the attorney-client privilege.

By way of background. The plaintiff attended an annual on-line training on U.S. wage-hour compliance conducted by in-house counsel for the purpose of “seeking legal advice.”

The plaintiff then sought an order compelling Defendants to produce the training document and documents related to an employee classification review project, but Defendants withheld it asserting attorney-client privilege.

The Court reviewed the training document in camera and found them to be protected by the attorney-client privilege. It sustained the Defendants’ objection to producing them. According to the Court – except for a couple – each page was marked as confidential and the document “contains sixty-three slides consisting of essentially pure legal advice regarding federal and state wage-hour laws, followed by three slides about how to exit the training and verify that it was viewed.”There is no evidence of a privilege waiver.

More on McKnight v. Honeywell Safety Products USA, Inc., is available at https://docs.justia.com…

For more information on how attorney-client privilege may be waived, contact Francesca Giannoni-Crystal. Thanks to Federica Romanelli