Renco filed an ex parte application in the Southern District of Florida seeking an order to take discovery from an attorney, Victor Careaga, who previously worked at Halpern and Rodriguez-Napoli. Renco sought the discovery for use in an ongoing criminal investigation in Peru, which Renco had initiated, alleging that Careaga engaged in the illegal falsification of records when he recruited Peruvian clients to join in personal injury litigation against Renco.  Halpern and Rodriguez-Napoli intervened in the §1782 action and moved for protective orders, asserting attorney-client privilege and work product protection over the discovery Renco sought from Careaga. The District Court denied the law firms’ motions, finding that their assertions of attorney-client privilege and work product protection had not been sufficiently established, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed.

“The magistrate judge” the Court of Appeal observed, “offered several independent reasons for denying Halpern’s motion for protective order. First, Halpern improperly lumped numerous documents together, offering only a blanket assertion of privilege or protection…. In the second place, despite the improper blanket assertions of privilege and protection, the magistrate judge carefully parsed the Careaga Log to the extent reasonably possible, discerning multiple undated entries, typographical errors, and vague descriptions that further impeded its ability to evaluate Halpern’s motion….  Halpern says that the district court was required to look past these obvious deficiencies. The argument misapprehends Halpern’s evidentiary burden and instead attempts to place the burden to search and explain on the district court. But the law does not require a district court to parse deficient privilege logs in the hunt for a possible claim of privilege or protection…. The long and short of it is that the district court acted well within its discretion in concluding that Halpern’s deficient Careaga Log failed to substantiate its claims of privilege and protection, and the court was not obliged to conduct any further analysis or overlook the Log’s deficiencies.

“Despite these considerable deficiencies, the magistrate judge engaged in an individualized analysis of at least twelve entries found in the Careaga Log, which asserted that expense reports, receipts, and reimbursement checks were attorney work product. The court explained, however, that these documents – which were generated by unidentified third-party vendors and described client recruitment activities – were ordinary business records and therefore not protected by the work product doctrine. Although Halpern correctly observes that work product protection may extend to third-party materials, this protection would apply only when the primary motivating purpose of the document is to aid in possible litigation. Nothing in this record suggests that these checks, expense reports, and third-party receipts were entitled to work product protection.

“Halpern also relies on our decision in In re Grand Jury Subpoena, which, it says, obliged the district court to engage in a document-by-document review and either to conduct an in camera review or hold a hearing. But the plain language of In re Grand Jury Subpoena makes clear that the burden still rests squarely on the asserting party to substantiate its claim of privilege with a document-by-document explanation. Only after that individualized showing has been made is the district court required to assess the validity of each claim, document-by-document by either conducting a hearing or inspecting the documents in camera. Halpern has not met that threshold and was not entitled to any further review. In fact, to require a district court to perform an exhaustive, document-by-document examination by in camera review or to conduct a hearing whenever attorney-client privilege or work product protection is asserted – regardless of whether the assertion has been supported in any way – would improperly shift the burden from the party asserting the privilege to the trial court. The law requires no such transformation and placing this new-found burden on the trial court would be particularly unsustainable in the face of modern litigation, which often involves voluminous discovery.”

 

In re Renco Group, No.24-13266, 2026 WL 157956 (11th Cir. Jan. 21, 2026)