The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has waded into a dispute between the lawyers for a whistleblower and Kellogg Brown & Root Services Inc. over whether the company can withhold papers it says are protected by attorney-client privilege.
John Elwood of Vinson & Elkins, representing KBR, argued before a three-judge panel in May that a lower court judge had erred in compelling the company to produce 89 documents related to the False Claims Act suit filed against it by purported whistleblower Harry Barko. The papers, which concern KBR’s investigation into the alleged wrongdoing, didn’t lose the protection of attorney-client privilege even though the company conducted the probe to comply with regulatory law, he said.
