Day 262 - 13 Jun 96 - Page 61
1 client and must be produced.
2
3 Lord Loreburn said, on page 5, halfway down the page, just
4 before halfway:
5
6 "He was a member of a trade union on terms which
7 entitled him to a variety of benefits, and among
8 others to the right of receiving legal
9 assistance in case of unjust dismissal. In such
10 cases he was bound by the rules to give full
11 particulars to the authorities of the trade
12 union, and the sanction of the executive
13 committee or of the general secretary was needed
14 before a solicitor was engaged. In the present
15 instance certain letters passed between
16 Godfrey Jones and the officials of the union,
17 containing information about the dispute. They
18 were written before any action was brought in
19 order to satisfy the union authorities that they
20 ought to sanction the employment of a solicitor
21 and to furnish information and to furnish
22 information by which the solicitor should be
23 enabled to conduct the action which the workmen
24 contemplated and desired."
25
26 Over the page, about six lines down:
27
28 "Both client and solicitor may act through an
29 agent, and therefore communications to or
30 through the agent are within the privilege. But
31 if communications are made to him as a person
32 who has himself to consider and act upon them,
33 then the privilege is gone; and this is because
34 the principle which protects communications only
35 between solicitor and client no longer applies.
36 Here documents are in existence relating to the
37 matter in dispute which were communicated to
38 someone who was not a solicitor, nor the mere
39 alter ego of the solicitor.
40
41 "Disclosure is constantly required of
42 letters between partners or between a firm and
43 its agents. It is rare in litigation when
44 communications are confined to letters passing
45 between solicitor and client. And every large
46 concern, whether a railway company or a trade
47 union or whatever it be, that must needs conduct
48 its business by correspondence is amenable to
49 the same rule - a rule in itself wholesome, for
50 it favours the placing before a Court of Justice
51 of all material circumstances that may lead to a
52 just decision."
53
54 On the basis of that authority, which was applied in
55 Alfred Compton Amusement Machines Ltd. V. Commissioners of
56 Customs and Excise, I ask your Lordship to consider what
57 was the nature of the relationship in this case.
58
59 You have, first of all, the agents. You have the firm of
60 inquiry agents who either employed them or engaged them --
