Legal News

Lawyers rethinking how they work with private investigators

By Jason Siegel

Lawyers are rethinking how they work with private investigators, as Los Angeles lawyer Terry Christensen goes to trial next Wednesday, charged with paying celebrity sleuth Anthony Pellicano over $100,000 to illegally wiretap some of his opponents.

Regardless of the verdict, lawyers are getting more careful about who they hire, as a result of the Christensen case (see here, here, here and here) as well as last year's criminal case involving a Hewlett-Packard Co. internal investigation where telephone records were illegally obtained.

Lawyers that keep themselves ignorant of what their private investigators are doing may have a good defense in a criminal trial, but not in an civil lawsuit, SunKist Growers corporate secretary and senior counsel John Caragozian told The National Law Journal.

Private investigators say lawyers are asking more questions about their techniques, Jimmie Mesis, the editor-in-chief for PI Magazine told NLJ.

Read the full NLJ story here

The Business Crimes Bulletin reported in February on the evolving rules governing the use of investigators.
 

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on July 07, 2008 (boomark / email).