The Law Society Gazette carries a brief report headed Email attachments not covered by legal privilege, court clarifies. The parties were Frasers Group Pls (formerly Sports Direct International plc) v The Financial Reporting Council Ltd, and the court was the UK Supreme Court. Legal Futures writes about it here with the title Email attachments are not privileged just because message is.
The issue, as described by the Gazette was “whether an email with attachments should be treated as a single communication for the purposes of [legal professional privilege], and so if the email was privileged, whether the attachments were also to be treated in the same way”.
The court refused permission to appeal because the application disclosed no arguable point of law. Barrister Tom Bell of Hardwicke was quick to observe on Twitter that “the SC refusing permission to appeal on proposition X doesn’t in any way equate to it “effectively deciding” proposition X”. Continue reading