Legal Professional Privilege in England and Wales - Fraud Nullifies Privilege

Fraud Nullifies Privilege

Confidential communications between a client and his legal adviser are not privileged if made for the purpose of committing a fraud or crime. For these purposes, it is irrelevant whether the fraud is that of the client, the adviser or a third party acting through an innocent client. Fraud in this context is a wide concept extending to iniquity, which embraces (for example) a plan to enter into transactions at an undervalue to prejudice the client's creditors. However, disclosure of such documents in such circumstances will only be ordered by a court if a particularly strong prima facie case of fraud is shown.

Read more about this topic:  Legal Professional Privilege In England And Wales

Famous quotes containing the words fraud and/or privilege:

    There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I read, with a kind of hopeless envy, histories and legends of people of our craft who “do not write for money.” It must be a pleasant experience to be able to cultivate so delicate a class of motives for the privilege of doing one’s best to express one’s thoughts to people who care for them. Personally, I have yet to breathe the ether of such a transcendent sphere. I am proud to say that I have always been a working woman, and always had to be ...
    Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)