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Extracted Text (OCR)
Casasit 20k Or ic Reep Ais SL ERA) SRR BEAIT?
Case 1:09-cr-00581-WHP Document 522 Filed 04/06/12 Page 7 of 29
trial based on juror misconduct (nor did the firm give any consideration to that possibility) from
the time of the verdict and until after receipt on June 20 of juror Conrad’s letter to the prosecutor
and the ensuing investigation.
Events in July 2011
The July 8 Memorandum of Law
20. | The memorandum does not reference the discoveries in March or May. There was no
duty to do so. I accept that the Brune & Richard lawyers could anticipate a possible waiver claim
and could see how the government could cite the information that they had in March and May to
bolster that claim. But the lawyer ethics rules impose no general duty to volunteer information
that an opponent might use to support its argument and the exceptions in the rules cited do not
create one specifically.°
21. To put it otherwise, in order to find a duty to reveal there must be a source of the duty.
Professional conduct rules do impose duties to reveal, but they do so in a way that gives lawyers
notice of their requirements. No rule required disclosure of the information discovered in March
or May. Any such rule would have to specify the information required to be revealed and the
level of confidence in the accuracy of that information. Here, the rules imposing a duty to
disclose to the tribunal are Rules 3.3(b) and 3.5(d). These rules use actual knowledge as the level
of confidence required for the duty to disclosure. The information the lawyers had about the
material they had gathered in March and May negates actual knowledge; the actions of the
lawyers are consistent only with a conclusion of a lack of actual knowledge. In sum, only if the
lawyers had had actual knowledge in March or May would they have had to reveal that in July,
and they did not have actual knowledge.
22. In certain places, the memorandum contains statements that are apparently alleged to
imply that the Brune & Richard lawyers did not have information about juror Conrad’s identity
prior to June 20, when they received a copy of her letter to the government.
° Because the premises of the adversary system are central here, instruction from the contiguous world
of Rule 11 is again apt: ,
The primary purpose of Rule 11 is to deter baseless court filings, but this goal must be
considered in light of the fact that, in an adversary system of litigation, the essence of the
lawyer's task is to present issues of facts and law “as favorably as fairly possible” in support of
the client's claim. See United Nat. Ins. Co. v. R & D Latex Corp., 242 F.3d 1102, 1115 (9" Cir.
2001). Therefore, judges should “impose sanctions on lawyers for their mode of advocacy only
in the most egregious situations, lest lawyers be deterred from vigorous representation of
their clients.” Id. (citing Schlaifer Nance & Co., Inc. v. Estates of Warhol, 194 F.3d 323, 341 (2
Cir. 1999).
Desert Outdoor Advertising, Inc. v. City of Oakland, 2009 WL 943948 at *3 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 7 2009).
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Extracted Information
Dates
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| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00010132.jpg |
| File Size | 901.5 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 93.9% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 3,063 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 17:55:21.729144 |