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Case 1:15-cv-07433-LAP Document 1320-18 Filed 01/03/24 Page 27 of 40 have emphasized that Savino does not mean that a party waives attorney-client privilege merely by bringing or defending a lawsuit. Coates v. Akerman, Senterfitt & Edison, P.A., 940 So.2d 504 (Fla. 2d DCA 2006). Instead, waiver occurs only when a party “must necessarily use the privilege information to establish its claim or defense.” Jd. at 510-11 (emphasis added). Most recently, in Genovese v. Provident Life and Accident Ins. Co., 74 So. 3d 1064, 1069 (Fla. 2011), as revised on denial of reh’g (Nov. 10, 2011), the Florida Supreme Court cited both Coates and Savino to hold that the “at issue” doctrine allows discovery of privileged material only when the holder of the privilege — the client — raises the advice of counsel as a claim or defense in the action and the communication is essential to the claim or defense. Jd. Under these restrictive standards, Ms. Giuffre’s communications were never at issue in her attorneys’ personal, defamation case against Dershowitz. Consider, for example, a typical allegation Cassell and Edwards’ complaint: Immediately following the filing of what Defendant, Dershowitz, knew to be an entirely proper and well-founded pleading, Dershowitz initiated a massive public media assault on the reputation and character of Bradley J. Edwards and Paul G. Cassell accusing them of intentionally lying in their filing, of having leveled knowingly false accusations against the Defendant, Dershowitz, without ever conducting any investigation of the credibility of the accusations, and of having acted unethically to the extent that their willful misconduct warranted and required disbarment. McCawley Decl., Ex. 5 at 4 (4 17). As is immediately apparent, this allegation does not require an examination of Ms. Giuffre’s confidential communications with her attorneys. Instead, it requires an assessment of Dershowitz’s state of mind with regard to his knowledge of the information that Cassell and Edwards had to support the filing of the allegations. And, as supporting exhibits to the pleadings Cassell and Edwards filed made clear, the adequacy of their investigation could be readily established from many sources that did not have any connection to what Ms. Giuffre may or may not have told them in confidence. See, e.g., McCawley Decl., Ex. 20