Enlarge / Google CEO Sundar Pichai is using his phone at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 12, 2018 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
The U.S. Department of Justice and 14 state prosecutors yesterday asked a federal judge to sanction Google for abusing lawyer / client privileges to hide email from proceedings.
“In a program called’Communicate with Care’, Google trains its employees to protect sensitive business communications, whether or not they really need lawyers, privilege labels, and legal advice. Instructs you to add a general “request” for advice. In many cases, knowing the game, the in-house lawyer included in these care communication emails does not respond at all, “DOJ told the court.The fact that lawyers often do not reply to emails “Underscore[es] These communications are not a true request for legal advice, but an effort to hide potential evidence. “
The Justice Department insisted in a motion to sanction Google, “and force the disclosure of documents that Google unfairly claimed as lawyer / client privileges,” in a memorandum supporting the motion. “The Communicate-with-Care program had no purpose other than misleading anyone who might look for a document in an investigation, discovery, or subsequent dispute,” DOJ claimed.
CC lawyers are a common practice, but the DOJ says Google has taken it to a “terrible” level. “The production of Google’s institutionalized false privilege claims has been terrible and has permeated the company from top executives for nearly a decade,” the Justice Department said.
“This practice continued unabated, after the company became aware of the Justice Department’s investigation and after filing a complaint in the proceedings,” DOJ said. The Justice Department also said, “The fact that copying a lawyer does not give you privileges is well resolved.”advertisement
DOJ: Emails related to Google Search Exclusive
The new motion and memorandum are part of the antitrust proceedings of the Justice Department and the State Attorney General in October 2020. In the proceedings, government plaintiffs alleged that Google “maintains an illegal monopoly in common search services, search advertising, and the general market.” Search for US text ads through anti-competitive and exclusive practices. The case is in the US District Court in the District of Columbia.
The DOJ said in a motion yesterday that Google’s Communicate-with-Care program protects communications related to government claims.
In 2016, Google instructed employees to create an artificial sign of privilege for all written communications related to revenue sharing agreements and mobile application distribution agreements (MADAs). This is the exclusive contract at the heart of this action. Google repeated these instructions after the Justice Department issued its first discovery request in an investigation prior to the proceedings. Therefore, the court sanctions Google for the deliberate and deceptive misuse of attorney / client privileges, and if an in-house attorney is included, without editing all emails with anyone other than the attorney. You need to tell the company to create it. The request for legal advice was probably an excuse.
The 2016 training was held “after the European Commission has launched a formal investigation into Google’s search delivery practices on Android,” DOJ said. Google issued similar instructions after the DOJ began its investigation, saying, “The strategy worked. Google’s outside lawyers often accept claims of artificial privileges of Google employees at face value. After the plaintiff found and challenged the false privilege claim, Google’s outside lawyer was eventually deprived of the privilege. What was first withheld or edited based on the privilege. All the documents. “
In a statement to Axios, Google said, “Our team has been working in good faith to respond to inquiries and proceedings for years, but the opposite suggestion is totally wrong. Like US companies, we educate our employees about legal privileges and timing. We seek legal advice, and in this case alone we believe that our employees have potential privileges. We have submitted more than 4 million documents to DOJ, including many of them. ”We contacted Google today. I will update this article if there are more answers from the company.