In re Sealed Case
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
107 F.3d 46 (1997)
A grand jury investigating election law violations subpoenaed two documents from an unnamed company (defendant): an August 1994 memo documenting a June 1994 meeting between the company's vice president and general counsel about campaign-finance laws (withheld under attorney-client privilege), and a post-November-1995 file memo about the company's efforts to correct the vice president's earlier conduct (withheld as work product). Without deciding whether either protection actually applied, the district court applied the crime-fraud exception to both and held the company in contempt when it refused to produce the documents; the company appealed.
Whether the crime-fraud exception applies to pierce attorney-client privilege or work-product protection over documents, when the party invoking the exception fails to show the underlying criminal or fraudulent conduct was ongoing at the time the documents were created.