Common Interest Doctrine Prevails in Disclosure Dispute

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Communications between an insurance carrier and its reinsurers may or may not be protected by privilege and may or may not be further protected by the common interest doctrine. The analysis is fact-specific, but important where reinsurance communications are sought in litigation. In a recent case, a New York federal court upheld an insurer’s withholding of reinsurance communications based on both work-product privilege and the common interest doctrine.

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Reinsurance Information Is Hard to Withhold

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In nearly every insurance coverage, bad faith or defense counsel legal malpractice case the insurance company is asked to produce reinsurance information and communications related to the underlying claim. This information is requested for the possibility that the insurance company has revealed something to the reinsurers that might help the policyholder or other counterparty. Whether reinsurance information is ever really helpful is a discussion for another day but what we do see from the courts is a clear trend toward compelling discovery of reinsurance information.

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