Joint Defense Agreement Pennsylvania

Michael A. Schwartz (Temple Law Adjunct) is Co-Chair of the Litigation and Management Department, Chair of the White Collar Litigation and Investigations Practice Group, and a member of the Media and Communications Practice Group at Pepper Hamilton, LLP. His practice focuses on criminal defense, internal corporate investigations, corporate compliance, corporate monitoring and amendment issues. (1) the communication was made as part of a joint defence effort; The court found, however, that Barr failed to meet his burden of finding that the communications between Barr and Chemagis were part of an „ongoing and coordinated legal defense.“ Instead, the evidence presented led the court to conclude that „Chemagis had no role to play in the defense“ of the patent litigation and that it was Barr who „fully controlled“ this litigation. Consequently, the General Court held that the common interest agreement/common defence was ineffective and that, in the absence of such a valid agreement, legal privilege had been waived and that the communication between Barr and Chemagis was not protected against disclosure to the King Drug applicants. King Drug is an antitrust procedure. Barr, one of the accused, is a pharmaceutical company. Chemagis, a non-partisan, is a supplier to Barr. Barr and Chemagis have entered into a joint written defense agreement regarding previous patent litigation involving Barr but not Chemagis. Under this joint defense agreement, representatives of Barr and Chemagis, both lawyers and non-lawyers, communicated with each other on matters directly or indirectly related to the patent litigation.

In a decision of July 7, 2011, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania rejected a written joint defense agreement and required the submission of documents because the party who invoked privilege could not demonstrate that the joint communications in question promote an „ongoing“ legal strategy, common or coordinate“.. . .