Stuff You Should Know - How Attorney-Client Privilege Works

Episode Date: July 19, 2018

One of the oldest protected forms of speech comes from when a lawyer speaks with their client. Over centuries, this legal privilege has been protected and defined and still stands stronger than ever. Find out why a person’s ability to speak freely to their counselor is so highly prized and protected.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know,

Flying Solo Edition. I was gonna not say anything, and just see if anyone out there would think I just wasn't here at all. It's just me, everybody. If you'd be like, God, no, no. And this torment. It's gears.

I don't know about that, man. Do you remember how Berserk everyone went with that one jokie 3D printer? I know. April Fool's episode? April Fool's, yeah. Poor Ben. No, people were very respectful to Ben.

They were like, Ben, I really like you, but this is a travesty. All right, so this is a pretty relevant topic. Oh, wait, hold on. Will you indulge me real quick? Sure. Speaking of Ben, so just, I wanna give a shout out real quick.

Ben and I worked on a HowStuffWorks first ever fiction podcast called The Control Group, and it's out. The first five episodes are out, and maybe by the time this comes out, we'll be releasing the last five once a week, and it's pretty good. It's set in the 60s.

It takes place in a mental asylum, and there's a doctor who is running the show who is under the encouragement of a very shady organization, a secretive shady organization, starting to really go off the rails and lose his ethics and morality. You could say that. It's pretty engrossing.

It's a really engrossed, yeah, for sure. It's an engrossing radio drama, basically. Yeah, if you like our MK Ultra podcast episodes, then this is kind of right up your alley. For sure, and it's really, really well done. The acting is top notch, the music is really great, the sound effects are great, it really sucks you in. So go check it out on iTunes, The Control Group,

and if you like it, leave a nice review maybe if you want. Whatever, even if you just go and enjoy it, that's all I'm asking you to do. Agreed. Okay, thanks for indulging me, Charles. Of course. So we're moving on to attorney-client privilege, which is something that I knew

just about everything about it turns out. Oh, yeah? Yeah, because there's not that much to it. I mean, there's some nuance here or there, but basically everybody knows what it is. Yeah, but here's the thing, there is nuance because our legal system here in the United States and in Canada are very much based on precedent

and legal precedent, and attorney-client privilege is not something that was laid out in the Constitution. So it's something we've had to formulate over the years through precedent on prior cases to kind of figure out all the nuances that you were talking about. That's right, since it comes from English common law, that means it's a very old custom,

but since, like you're saying, it's not enshrined in the Constitution, you can't point to them and be like, here are the rules of attorney-client privilege. You have to work it out through court cases over the years. Yeah, should we talk about that very first one or the very first one that mattered?

Yeah, for sure. And do you remember the story from the revenge episode we did? Was that where this was? Mm-hmm. Okay. It did smack up something that I had heard before. Pretty fascinating, so tell it to him.

All right, so this is 1743, and prior to this, there had been references to attorney-client privilege, but it's all here that only 14 reported decisions on this predate, this 1743 case. So it wasn't something trotted out there a lot, but, honestly, the Anglesea... I would say Anglesey.

Anglesey? Mm-hmm. Really? Yeah, I guess you could pronounce the Anglesea, huh? It's, honestly, Jennifer Aniston versus Julio Iglesias. Well, regardless, it's, let's just say AVA, is a very pivotal trial because it pitted, this is a story of inheritance,

when there was a man named Arthur who died, and his brother, Richard, said, you know what? I'm due to inherit this estate because my brother didn't have any kids. Mwah! But, it was very inconvenient when someone named James showed up and said, no, no, no, I am his long lost son in rightful error.

He said, Mwah! And that's where the story kicks off. Right, so James, it turns out, was very much telling the truth. He says, not only is this guy a jerk, he knows full well that I'm the rightful error, because he got rid of me when I was a mere 12-year-old pup. Yeah.

So, coming up in England, all of a sudden I found myself kidnapped. Suddenly, this is like Robert Louis Stevenson book, right? Sure. So, he's kidnapped and sent off to Delaware to live as an indentured servant for 13 years. Yeah, which might as well have been Siberia at the time. Exactly, I mean, still, kinda.

And he's working it off as a, like he just basically said, this is my fate. So, he worked for 13 years as an indentured servant, and worked it off and made his way down to Jamaica at age 25, and then made his way back to England to claim his inheritance. So, he shows up and his uncle, Richard, who was the Earl of, well, Anglesea,

or Anglesea, one of the two. And he said, this guy is a fraud, I'm the rightful error. So, first of all, Richard thinks he got rid of this kid forever. Now, all of a sudden, the kid shows up, and he does another even dastardly thing. And frames him for murder, I guess. Yeah, there was this accident that happened,

and Earl got his attorney, one John Gifford, to kind of go for a murder prosecution, even though he knew that the death was an accident. So, like you said, he sort of framed it up in such a way that he could really get rid of this kid, now a young adult, and even said in pretrial hearings of his nephew, he would give 10,000 pounds to have him hanged. Yeah.

And how this all relates back to attorney-client privileges is that, like we said, Gifford was his attorney, and was sort of in on this thing. And when it all came out, the attorney was the one, the only person really that could give testimony that this happened. And the original Uncle Dick said, no, no, no, this is attorney-client privilege.

This is protected, and it would violate that. It went all the way to court, and they said, no, no, no. That's not the case. I'm sorry to tell you. Yeah, because Anisley argued that, or his lawyer argued that these other things, the kidnapping that the lawyer helped arrange, the statement about how he would have him hanged

for 10,000 pounds, that had nothing to do with the inheritance. And what we were talking about here was the inheritance, and thus, that shouldn't be protected communication between the client and his attorney. And the court said, you know what? I don't even care what you just said. This story is so bonkers, and that guy is so patently evil. I'm gonna rule in favor of you.

And the first ruling, the first major clear, concise ruling on attorney-client privilege was registered in 1743. Right, so the whole idea behind attorney-client privilege is to give you the assurance as a client that you can speak to your attorney in private, and that's very key, as we'll find out later, in private, without fear that they will then

use that information against you somehow. Or that that information can be extracted from them under threat of, say, jail time or something. Yeah, exactly. And it's defined pretty well in this other article you sent. It's where legal advice of any kind is sought from a professional legal advisor, in his or her capacity as such.

The communications relating to that purpose made in confidence by the client are, at his or her instance, permanently protected from disclosure by the client or by the legal advisor, except the protection be waived. Yeah, and that's, I mean, that's a pretty big mouthful, but what it's basically saying is that if you commit a crime or commit a tort,

which is basically a civil act against somebody that they can sue you for, if you commit either one of those, then you say, oh, God, I need a lawyer. And you go to a lawyer and say, I want you to be my lawyer. And the lawyer says, okay, go ahead. And you start talking.

Say, you tell them everything. You admit to guilt. You admit to everything. It doesn't matter what you've admitted to. That that speech, that communication, that conversation is to stay between you and your lawyer forever, even after your death they've ruled, as we'll see.

And that you, the client, are the only person who can waive that right, that privilege of that communication. So that your lawyer has to take it to their grave, even after you're dead, as long as you say, as long as you never waive that right. Yeah, and that's what you just said would satisfy one of the four basic elements necessary here,

which is one, it was a communication. Two, it was made between the privileged persons, that is you and the attorney. It was made in confidence, and this one's really important. It's for the purpose of seeking or obtaining legal assistance. So it's, you can't, it doesn't count if you go to your pal who's a lawyer

and ask them for legal advice if you're not retaining them for their services. That's a big one. That's a really big one. Even if you do go to a pal and retain them as a lawyer officially, or even if your lawyer's not your pal and you retain them as a lawyer,

if you say, I committed this crime, I need your help to cover it up, that's not protected either. Correct. You also can't go to your lawyer and say, hey, I've been thinking that we could come up with a pretty great real estate scam with your lawyering skills and my scamming skills.

Let's come up with something. That would not be protected either, because it's a crime, you're planning a crime. Either planning a crime or covering up a crime, you just lost your privilege, your attorney-client privilege. All right, should we take a break? I think so.

We'll do a little overview and we'll come back and talk about all the ins and outs right after this. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews,

co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck, so we're back. We're talking about some ins and outs. Yeah, and the exceptions. And you mentioned one that you would probably, that would probably fall under the crime fraud exception.

And again, that's the, in our own article, the thing they reference here is like, hey, let's set up a phony company as a front. Can you help me do that as an attorney? Then there is obviously no protection there of attorney-client privilege. Right, or I want you to go make this bribe to an elected official or whatever.

It doesn't matter what it is. If it's on the law books as a crime, you just lost your privilege. Yeah, and another way it can get gray, too, is if lawyers do a lot of things for people. It's not always providing legal counsel. So this is where it can get a little hinky on both sides. You can have a communicative act,

but as they say in our article, business is business and the law is the law. Right. It's only pertaining to legal matters, not if your attorney is doing some sort of business deal for you. Right, and that really comes in play more for corporate law, which is they're really big

into attorney-client privilege because they're frequently letting their client or their attorney in on tax evasion, maybe knowingly selling tainted products, or even on the more innocent end of the spectrum, like trade secrets, intellectuals, property secrets. A business attorney will have a lot of knowledge about their company or their client's business

that you just don't want them going and spilling the beans, even in open court, right? So that, but that's where you want it. You want that very much if you're a company with your corporate lawyer, but in the same time, as far as the courts have said over the years, that's very, very murky because what constitutes legal advice?

What constitutes business advice? Sometimes it's clear, you know, like what is our legal implication for this tax evasion that we just found out our accounting department did. That would be protected. Not, I don't know, help us figure out some ways to evade our taxes. Or even beyond that, even legal ways,

help us figure out some legal ways to evade our taxes. That might not cut muscle because that's more business than law. You could make an argument. Yeah, and like I said earlier, it can get super gray as far as whether or not you have obtained the services of an attorney because this can come about in a lot of ways.

Like if you have to, or trying to approve this in court, you can bring an engagement letter, some sort of contract that you've signed that outlines fees or just the relationship. It can be an oral agreement as long as it's, you know, both sides are acknowledging that. It could be that they have appeared for you in court. Like, you know, you don't go to court that first day,

like your attorney goes on your behalf and like file something for you in court. Some sort of document, then that is an official expressed acknowledgement. So there are all kinds of ways that you can have an attorney officially represent you, but it has to go beyond just sitting in a room and saying like, I could use a little advice.

Like you have to agree that you're engaging one another. Right, so our non-legal legal advice to you that is not legal advice in any way, shape, or form is if you ever hire a lawyer, doesn't matter what kind of lawyer it is, before you tell them anything, say, I would like to take you on as my lawyer, will you take me on as your client?

And if they say, yes, everything after that is now privileged as long as you're not planning a crime, right? Yes, and you'll know that happens because they start a little timer on their desk that takes up little dollar bill clinks. But even without an express, say, like an engagement letter or even them expressly saying, yes, I'm your lawyer, I think courts have kind of found over the years

that there are certain things that a person could reasonably expect that the lawyer has agreed to represent them, right? Like if you go to a lawyer that you've used before but you aren't currently engaged with and they start doling out legal advice because you told them your problem, a court would probably find

that you had an attorney-client relationship and therefore there was attorney-client privilege. If they quote you fees and then follow up with some advice, same thing. It's more just like the client can't unilaterally say, oh, we had an attorney-client relationship so this is protected. There has to be some sort of sign or signal

from the lawyer as well that there's a relationship there. Yeah, and speaking of signs or signals, apparently it doesn't even have to be like a verbal communication that like you could look at your attorney and say like, well, you can ask them a question and they could just sort of give you a wink

and tap their nose and that could be used in court. They don't have to expressly say something out loud even. No, that can't be used in court. That's protected communication. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. I mean, that would come up but it doesn't have to, yeah, I think I just confused everybody but. But yeah, you don't even have to be talking.

Like if they say, did you kill that person? And you nod, that's protected communication, you know? Or I think they've even found that like a silence, like a complete silence is protected communication too because you're not denying it. Things left unsaid? Pretty much, yeah, because if somebody's like, did you kill that person?

And you didn't, you're gonna say, hell no, I didn't kill that person, get me out of this. If you're just completely silent, I think a reasonable person might take that as an ambition of guilt, but it's still a protected communication between you and your lawyer. Should we talk about people versus Meredith?

I think so. People be Meredith? Sure. So this was in California in 1976 and a man named Michael Meredith convinced his friend Frank Scott to commit a crime, which was let's jump this guy, Mr. David Wade. They ended up shooting and killing him.

I don't know if that was the original intent but that's what happened. They ran for it, they got arrested, found and arrested and then they were in jail. So Scott's appointed counsel was one, Mr. James Schenck and he went by to talk and they were kind of chit chatting around and Scott said something about a wallet. He was like, yeah, we got the wallet from the victim.

We split the money up and put it in a trash can. The lawyer then sends an investigator and actually found that wallet and took it and gave it to the cops. So obviously this was a key piece of evidence that ended up, well, I mean, ended up backfiring because his client rightfully went to prison. But Schenck was subpoenaed and said,

you're gonna be found in contempt of court unless you admit like how this thing went down and how you got this wallet. And the whole key here is if he had never went and got the wallet, then it still would have been attorney-client privilege. Yeah, because all he did was receive information in confidence from his client.

It was when he basically broke through into the real world and manipulated evidence, that just changed everything. And apparently broke the veil or the privilege of that communication. Well, yeah, which is rightfully so because the courts, I believe this one, yeah, went all the way to the California Supreme Court. They ruled rightfully that they can't do this

because all this is gonna do, if we allowed it, it would incentivize defense attorneys to go out and try and find evidence and collect it. And you don't want attorneys doing that. Yeah, because once they collected it, it would enter the veil of privacy and would be protected and you couldn't ever discover it. Yeah.

Similarly, though, and I think, I agree with you, I think that that's just logical and sensible. You can't allow attorneys to go do that kind of thing. Similarly, just because you communicated a fact doesn't mean that the fact itself is protected from discovery, just that your communication of that fact to your lawyer was protected. So if there's other ways to find out that you did something,

and this seems just bone-headedly obvious, but apparently it was worth spelling out in at least one of these articles. If you said, yes, I killed that person, your lawyer can't tell anybody, you said that to them. But if you said that to your wife, well, your coworker, your coworker can go testify against you.

So it's not like the fact that you have admitted that you killed that person is protected. It's that the communication between you and your lawyer about that fact is what's protected. Right, so if it's otherwise discoverable, then it's fair game. Yeah, it's not like you can enshrine a fact with your lawyer and then it belongs to them and them only

and the rest of the world can never learn of it legally speaking. Yeah, that's a good point. That doesn't make any sense, but I guess it was worth working out. Do you want to take a break? I think we shall. All right, we'll go back and talk about

this extending beyond the grave. ["Beyond the Grave"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there

when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, Chuck, so you have a relationship with your attorney. Your attorney is like 10 years old at the time you hire him. And you're 70. So you pass on before your lawyer. Well, it turns out that something comes up later on. And somebody wants info from your lawyer, private info that you gave them.

Your lawyer says, no way, Jose, this is covered by attorney-client privilege. That is true. Yeah, because that happened very famously with Vincent Foster, who as most people know was a big, he worked for the Clintons in Arkansas. He was an attorney. He was one of their close attorneys, personal attorneys,

I think. Yeah, so he ended up killing himself. And if you have on your tinfoil hat or if you go to these conspiracy websites, then you firmly believe that Bill and Hillary Clinton murdered this man. With their bare hands. With their bare hands.

If you're a reasonable human, you know that he fell into clinical depression. And every single investigator and investigative unit, and there were quite a few, including one kind of star, went out and said, yes, he definitely committed suicide. All the evidence is there. So I feel like that's a spectrum. You could be somewhere on that spectrum

between those two beliefs. Oh, what, between thinking he killed himself and was murdered? Yeah. So he was obviously involved in the infamous Whitewater real estate deal. And when Kenneth Starr was investigating this stuff, he tried to get his hands on notes created by Foster's lawyer. And the lawyer said, no, attorney-client privilege,

even though this man is dead. And it went all the way to the Supreme Court. And they ruled six to three that it must be honored even after the grave. Yeah, I was really surprised that that was as recent as it was. I thought that that would have been a real old case that came up long ago. But yeah, that was from the 90s.

I agree. So that one was established in, well, the 90s. I don't see when the actual case or when the Supreme Court ruled on it. But that was one thing that was tested in court. There was another one that had to do with employees giving testimony for their company. For a long time, it was if you hired,

if you were a director level or an executive level person in a company, and you were talking to corporate counsel, whatever communication was being made was protected. But then cases started to come up, like what if somebody from accounting was talking to corporate counsel about that case? Is that protected? And for a long time, there was this test called the Control

Group Test, appropriately, which was basically just are you one of the people who is in a position to take the advice of legal counsel and either run with it or decide not to do with it? Are you pretty high up in the company? And if you weren't, then that speech wasn't protected. But then over time, they decided that, no, one of the reasons why we have this privilege

is that we want lawyers to be fully briefed on the facts of the case so that they can figure out the best defense or the best legal route to resolving this thing. And if they're not fully informed, then we're hamstringing our attorneys. So we want them to know everything, and they won't know everything unless people feel comfortable

telling them everything, hence the attorney-client privilege. Well, they said that extends to employees as well, because employees sometimes have information that members of that Control Group won't have. And as long as they're talking about something that directly reflects their job and the case at hand to that counsel, that would be considered protected by the attorney-client privilege.

That was the up-John ruling, I believe. Yeah, and just this year, it's been making a lot of headlines because of the Mueller investigation when Trump's personal attorney, or one of his personal attorneys, one, Michael Cohen, had his office raided in April of this year, in 2018, and the FBI seized all sorts of documents

looking for evidence of bank fraud. It came back that it was part of the Mueller investigation, and Trump starts tweeting about how attorney-client privilege is dead. And the attorney that was quoted in this article said, no, it's not dead at all, this is very typical. What's going on is there is a judge that has, in the Cohen case,

has appointed what they call a taint team, one of the more unfortunate, unfortunately named teams. And what they do, this is a third party, what they call an arms-length group of qualified people. So they're not involved with anyone in this investigation. And they go through all the evidence gathered and say, what's pertinent to the case? What's not pertinent?

And here's the pertinent stuff. It's not like we're just trying to release everything ever said between these two men. Right, and they take all the stuff they saw that didn't relate to the case to their grave. So it is a form, an extension of attorney-client privilege. Yeah, and especially in the Cohen case, this attorney goes on to say,

because Cohen was performing little to no actual legal work for Trump, not much of what was seized in the raid would be protected anyway. Gotcha. So that's what this attorney says. That's his expert opinion. So can't you see one member of the taint team at the bar being like, the snow, what it means, Derek?

I could say in that. It's really important and vital. Oh, that's good stuff. So we should talk about another famous recent case of attorney-client privilege, or attorney-client privilege being violated, actually, with the Jodi Arias case. Yeah, I don't know a whole lot about this one,

except that she murdered someone, right? Yes, in cold blood. From what I read most recently, one of the alternate jurors believes that she killed her ex-boyfriend because he was breaking up with her and she wanted to be the last person he had sex with, or the only person he had sex with,

or the last one of the two. Off the rails stabbed him like 28 to 29 times, cut his throat, shot him in the head, and just left him for dead and ran off to California. It was caught within a week or so of his body being discovered. So she mounted a defense that he was a pedophile, that he abused her,

and that he was in the act of physically abusing her when she fought back and snapped and killed him. Apparently that was all just completely made up, that he wasn't a pedophile, he wasn't an abuser, and he was just trying to break up with her. That's the way it stands now. And she was convicted of, I think premeditated murder,

initially sentenced to death. The mistrial was declared and she ended up with life without the possibility of parole. So that's where it stands now. She publicly criticized her public defender, a guy named Kirk Nermey. And over the years, Kirk kind of put up with it and then was diagnosed with cancer

and said, to hell with it, I'm writing a tell all book. Is that why? That's what he says. He says that he had a bit of an epiphany, a reversal of his life in that cancer diagnosis and said, I might be dead, I can't let her be the only person telling the side of the story.

Yeah, cause he's saying like a canary in this book. Oh yeah, man. He revealed stuff that didn't come out at trial. He gave his own personal assessment of her guilt that she was definitely guilty, talked about how her mother lying on the stand for her was laughable, just all sorts of stuff, just ripped apart their attorney client privilege.

And so as a result, she's suing him big time. So that's still in the middle of, I mean, this hasn't been decided, right? Not as far as I know. I think the article I read was from 2018. So I don't think it's been decided yet. I think he, and he's defending himself saying, no, when she gave public interviews

and talked about our private attorney client conversations, she revoked privilege, she waved her privilege in doing so. And so I'm free to tell anybody anything about it. So the California bar, the Arizona bar, I think disbarred him. He agreed to disbarment without admitting misconduct. And now he's like a life coach or a professional coach for lawyers.

Interesting. Yeah, it is very interesting. The whole thing's super interesting. Her case is just gut wrenching. And this new piece of it, he basically hates her. Hates her. He says that he was forced into the smear campaign as a defense, that he didn't want to have anything to do.

He just hates her guts. And even her defense team said that he's developed some bizarre hatred of her. And he said in this quote in this Reuters article that he was standing up to years of abuse from her. So it's like a deep seated hatred. One way or another, they ruined each other's lives. I think she blames him for botching her defense.

He blames her apparently for a whole slate of stuff. So this will probably be another precedent center, huh? I would guess so, but it's a civil case. So yeah, it could still set precedent. But yeah, the fact that he was disbarred, that doesn't bode well for him. But I have the feeling he's like, I'm a dying of cancer, so what ofs?

Right, screw it. So that's attorney client privilege. I don't think we missed anything, did we? I don't think so. There are probably little nitpicky things here and there. It is, there are definitely some gray areas, but it's been shaped and reformed over the years. I imagine it'll continue to be somewhat.

Hey, one more thing I want to say is I read, and this is kind of apropos, but not really. I read an article probably about six months ago, maybe a little longer. It was by a lawyer. You know how like lawyers will write like blog posts or articles or stuff for like their clients to send general stuff.

This one lawyer wrote one about how if you ever talk to the FBI without a lawyer, you are an idiot. Well, sure. And he put it like that. But no, he makes this really great case for why most people, especially innocent people, would think, I don't need a lawyer. And he said everyone needs a lawyer

when they're talking to the FBI. And he laid out this really exquisite case, multiple point case, why? To where by the end of it, you're like, oh yeah, you need a lawyer if you're talking to the FBI. It's pretty amazing stuff. He's like, you're not qualified to talk to the FBI. A lawyer can make you qualified.

You can't go in there and expect to be qualified. It was really fascinating. I don't remember who wrote it, but I think if you search something like if you don't have a lawyer and speak to the FBI, you're an idiot, something along those lines. It was fascinating. Just call 1-800-FED-Protect.

Josh will pass you through. For the people. You got anything else? Nope. Okay. Well, if you wanna know more about attorney-client privilege, you can type that word in the search bar, HowStuffWorks. And since I said privilege,

it's time for Listener Mail. I do have one more thing to say without getting too much on a soapbox. I hope people take the time to understand something like attorney-client privilege, because when the president is tweeting out things and all exclamation points, like attorney-client privilege is dead,

I think a lot of people believe that to be true. When they don't even really understand the true legal sense of what this means. You know? Yeah, I totally agree with you, man. It's just like it's misinformation that people think like a tweet means, well, that's a fact. You know?

Right. And it's not, it's a tweet. Yeah, I know. Something typed out on a phone. Like, do better, people. Fat fingers sometimes, too. All right, so moving on, I'm gonna call this Mercury Bobcat.

Yeah, I saw it this time. Hey guys, been listening for about a year and I just listened to the Ford Pinto Death Trap episode to put this timeline into context. I was born in 1993. This is what makes this story perfect, if you ask me. When I was a kid, my family had a powder blue Mercury Bobcat sister car to the Pinto.

Like you said, my dad sold the car and bought it back eight years later, just before my 16th birthday. And I drove this car for two years in high school, eventually selling it to buy a vehicle compatible with highway travel, because a Bobcat could not top 90 kilometers per hour. Which is what, like 20 miles an hour?

Yeah, I don't even know. Something like that. Well, I knew the Pinto was generally regarded as unsafe. I somehow did not know the extent of the carnage until listening to the episode that you guys did. And after listening, I can't believe my parents ever allowed me to get behind the wheel of this car. Although mine was a 78, so maybe that time

they had faith in the upgraded flaming death bolts. It's been about seven years. And this dude, if he was born in 93, he was driving this old car around well after its prime. Yeah, he would have been driving it in the 2000s. Like that's great. Yeah. I was like me, I had a 68 Beetle when I was in the 80s

and everyone just thought I was weird. With the ankle burner? Yep. It's been about seven years since I let the car go. I'm now 24. My friends and I missed the car so much I frequently search the Canadian version of Craigslist called Kijiji, hoping to buy it back.

So it's made up. I love this guy. What, Kijiji? That guy just said some code word that we just said on air. The Bobcat never went up in flames, but it did burn. We did burn it up in it a few times. I hear you, man. I think I know what you mean.

This is Owen from Nova Scotia. And I think that's pretty great. And I hope you get to buy that car back, dude. Yeah, good luck in your quest, Owen. Anybody out there in SYSK land, if you know where Owen's Bobcat is, help him out. Let us know and we'll connect you. Same with my 68 Beetle.

Oh, that'd be something. I'd like to buy that thing back. Well, if you guys know the VIN number, just shout it out. You and Owen, okay? Agreed. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck, you can hang out with us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com, and there you will find links

to all of our many myriad social media sites. And in the meantime, while you're doing that, if you want to dash off an email, you can send that thing to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. We're going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.