Hellard and another v Irwin Mitchell [2012] EWHC 2656 (Ch), [2012] All ER (D) 71 (Oct)
Privilege attached to confidential correspondence between solicitors, counsel and their clients. Once there had been a waiver regarding those communications, any evidence as to those communications could be adduced, including the evidence of anyone who was privy to the giving of the advice in question. Having waived privilege in regard to counsel’s advice, the claimant could not pick and choose which bits of counsel’s advice or deliberations could be fairly withheld from the court. As a matter of fairness, the waiver had to extend to the entirety of counsel’s recall, and not just to the parts of it that the claimant might choose to reveal or those parts which he had already chosen to reveal by referring to counsel’s advice in the proceedings. For similar reasons, the waiver would extend to working papers and deliberations of counsel to which the solicitor might not have been directly privy. Those materials would be equally subject to implied waiver because fairness required that by the bringing of the proceedings, which included references in the claimants’
