Reply #60: LOL. You are OBVIOUSLY not an attorney.

[Romulox]

Only a fool would reduce a complicated question such as the applicability of a narrow exception to the general rules which require confidentiality based on such scant evidence. It makes it clear you are not aware of the dimensions of the question. Anger is obviously your smokescreen here as elsewhere.

At any rate, if you interested in educating yourself, you'll see the circumstances under which an attorney may reveal confidences to the detriment of his client are quite limited, and, moreover, the ability to do so hinges on the magnitude of the danger involved, whether the danger has already occurred, or is imminent, and whether the attorney's services have been used in furtherance of the illegal or fraudulent act.

I daresay you don't have access to any of the facts needed to analyze this case, so yours is a blind assertion that the exception is somehow more applicable to this case than the rules based on...nothing more than your love of Toyota, I suspect. :rofl:

Below is the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility on the subject, if you are educatable. You'll notice that if the attorney learned of Toyota's falsifying of past safety data, and his services were not used in this endeavor, the attorney must keep this information confidential under most fact patterns. :hi:

(a) A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted by paragraph (b).

(b) A lawyer may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary:

(1) to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm;

(2) to prevent the client from committing a crime or fraud that is reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another and in furtherance of which the client has used or is using the lawyer's services;

(3) to prevent, mitigate or rectify substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another that is reasonably certain to result or has resulted from the client's commission of a crime or fraud in furtherance of which the client has used the lawyer's services;

(4) to secure legal advice about the lawyer's compliance with these Rules;

(5) to establish a claim or defense on behalf of the lawyer in a controversy between the lawyer and the client, to establish a defense to a criminal charge or civil claim against the lawyer based upon conduct in which the client was involved, or to respond to allegations in any proceeding concerning the lawyer's representation of the client; or

(6) to comply with other law or a court order.

http://www.abanet.org/cpr/mrpc/rule_1_6.html