Case Citator › Hickman v. Taylor

Hickman v. Taylor

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Criticized by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
329 U.S. 495
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
81 of 81
Citing cases (total)
4,981
Treatment dates
1950
Criticized by some courts
At least one reviewed court has criticized this case’s reasoning. No reviewed court has overruled it. Hickman v. Taylor is criticized among the reviewed cases: all 81 flagged citations have been read, and the 1 confirmed treatment is listed below. United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corporation questioned the breadth of Hickman's discussion of privilege for attorney working papers while resolving the dispute on the narrower ground that the patent-department lawyers were not acting as attorneys.
More on how this was screened

The other opinions applied Hickman's work-product doctrine or its own necessity and factual-information boundaries, described Rule 26(b)(3) as a partial codification, or placed adverse language on unrelated authorities.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

4,981 later cases cite Hickman v. Taylor; 81 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Hickman v. Taylor?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Criticized

  • The district court criticized as perhaps untenably broad Hickman's dictum suggesting a privilege for attorney working papers, while holding that the patent-department lawyers at issue were not acting as attorneys within the privilege.

    United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corporation · D. Mass. · filed

    Some of the communications are claimed to be privileged as the “work product of an employee acting in a legal capacity”. However, so far as appears, all these working papers were prepared by lawyers in the patent department who by the preceding paragraph have been ruled not to be attorneys within the attorney-client privilege. Hence, their working papers are not privileged even if (contrary to the perhaps untenably broad dictum in Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495, 508, 67 S.Ct. 385, 91 L.Ed. 451) it be assumed that there ever is a privilege for the working papers of attorneys.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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