Don’t Trust Your Lawyer With Information About Guns

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 10 months ago

In the spirit of this post at ZeroGov, The Federalist has some alarming news.

Adam Kilgore, general counsel for the Mississippi Bar, offered the following hypothetical to a group of experienced civil and criminal lawyers.

A man has been fired from his job. He is upset. He hires you as his attorney. You are of the opinion he has an excellent case and file a complaint on his behalf. You later discover he possesses a permit to carry a firearm. He also has a so-called enhanced carry license. While his case is wending through the courts, your client goes to a public area outside his former workplace. He displays signs that say he has been wrongfully fired. The man has no history of criminal activity, violence, or threatening anyone.

The instructor asked the class what actions, if any, a lawyer should take. It seemed obvious to me there was no reason to do anything except proceed with the client’s case. I (Jude) would also advise my client to avoid confrontations with anyone who worked for his former employer and what he might consider saying if approached by the media.

While I was forming an answer, many lawyers immediately said they would terminate the attorney-client relationship and contact law enforcement to report their client was potentially dangerous. The only reason offered was his firearm permits.

I have to admit, I was flabbergasted, for several reasons. First, I live in Mississippi, which is among the reddest of the red states. Second, the attorneys—let me call them gun-phobic—were proposing to violate the attorney-client privilege, which establishes one of the most sacrosanct confidential relationships. (American Bar Association “Rule of Professional Conduct” 1.6). As with most things, there are exceptions. They generally pertain to a client who is about to commit a criminal act or engage in fraudulent behavior.

The lawyers who proposed to call the police cited ABA Rule 1.6 (b)(1). It states “[a] lawyer may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary: … to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm.”

To them their confidentiality agreement means nothing at all.  The fact that you even have firearms means that removing them from you is necessary to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm.

How easy do you think it would be to overcome such an indictment from your own lawyer in front of a judge?  And yet, it can happen with literally no warning, no basis in fact, and no regard for your God-given rights.

Be careful what you say, and to whom you say it.


Comments

  1. On May 6, 2019 at 9:01 am, revjen45 said:

    Talk to your doctor like you were talking to the cops.

  2. On May 6, 2019 at 9:40 am, Ned2 said:

    Here in Wyoming, it is assumed you own firearms. They usually have an automatic firearms rider on your homeowners insurance.
    That being said, acting like the idiot in the example above is more likely to get you shot, so there would not be an issue with his lawyer getting sweaty palms and firing him as a client.

  3. On May 6, 2019 at 12:37 pm, elysianfield said:

    “Talk to your doctor like you were talking to the cops.”

    I have noticed, during my annual health examination, a series of seemingly innocuous questions that bear examination;

    “Do you sometimes feel depressed?”

    “Have you experienced depression in the last two weeks?

    …Speak into the microphone….

  4. On May 6, 2019 at 2:32 pm, Bram said:

    That information is classified and only released on a need-to-know basis.

  5. On May 7, 2019 at 1:59 am, Dan said:

    Evidence of the mass indoctrination EVERYONE who attends college/university is subjected to.

  6. On May 7, 2019 at 7:07 am, DrBob57 said:

    Never, ever, tell your doctor anything that if disclosed, could put you in legal jeopardy. Very few people know that there is a huge leaking loophole in HIPAA law. That is the ‘Business Partnership Agreement’. That allows your doctor to share what you thought was confidential with any Business Partner. Furthermore, those business partners can pass along your confidential information to their Business Partners, ad infinitum. Insidiously, these agreements are invisible to the patient, so you have no way to know who has your data.
    I know this because I worked for a major medical school for decades, and happened to watch my data get passed around.
    Yes indeed, talk to your doctor as if he were a cop.

  7. On May 7, 2019 at 10:28 am, DAN III said:

    ALCON,

    “First, let’s kill all the lawyers….” – – William Shakespeare – –

    “There are no good cops.” – – Robert Higgs – –

    Notice the relationship here ?

  8. On May 9, 2019 at 9:14 am, TRX said:

    > That information is classified and only released on a need-to-know basis.

    Most Americans have butted heads with one aspect or another of HIPAA, which is generally presented as “medical record-keeping” or “patient privacy” legislation.

    It’s neither, in any meaningful way. Among the things it does is make “medical professionals” criminally liable for not reporting things that used to be covered under “doctor-patient confidentiality”, which HIPAA pretty much destroys. For the things your doctor isn’t required to rat you out for to start with, he’s also required to turn your records in their entirety over to… practically any “official” from the Fed down to municipal employees.

    And that was all *before* Samsung, Apple, and Amazon decided to get into the “healthcare management” business…

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This article is filed under the category(s) Gun Control and was published May 5th, 2019 by Herschel Smith.

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