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Enron Mail |
This reports on our meet and confer session with the AG's office today regarding the subpoenas served upon Enron Energy Services. Mike Kirby and I spoke with Deputy AGs Margaret Wrighter and Paul Stein for approximately two hours. These are the essential points we covered: * Non-waiver of objections: They agreed that EES did not waive any objections by attempting to negotiate compliance with the subpoena. They will agree that any interim production of documents would not waive any of EES's objections to the subpoena, except as to those documents actually produced. * Territoriality: We told them that EES would not produce documents that resided outside the state. Much of the conference was devoted to their disagreement with this position. Wrighter suggested that the AG may seek prompt court relief on this issue or, in the alternative, file a lawsuit to make EES a party in this litigation, then reach out of state documents through ordinary discovery. We are at an impasse on this issue. * Confidentiality: The AG proposes a confidentiality order identical to the order in place between Reliant and Dynegy in their litigation with the AG in Los Angeles. This order limits access to confidential documents to less than 20 persons, but provides that persons outside the AG's office at the PUC and other California governmental agencies may review produced documents. The court in LA has recently ruled that the confidentiality in place with Reliant and Dynegy and Mirant may be amended to permit the offices of the Attorneys General of Oregon and Washington to review produced documents, subject to the confidentiality provisions of the agreement. Reliant and Dynergy are challenging this provision of the order in the appellate courts, but have not obtained an order staying their production under this order. The AG says they will not sign a different confidentiality order with us. We did not agree to these provisions. We are to give the AG a redlined confidentiality order on Monday that we would accept in return for producing documents within California. * Production of electronic documents: They insist that all documents kept in electronic form be produced in electronic form. We discussed the difficulties and burdens of doing this. They say they will insist upon this requirement. We will consider compliance for electronic documents within the state if it is not burdensome to do so. * Confidentiality of customer contracts: They will agree to narrow production to commercial customers. We explained that our commercial contracts have confidentiality provisions with our customers. We told them most have approximately a ten day notice period which we will honor. They asked for an example of this provision, which I said we would provide. They took the position that we should have been given notice to our customers weeks ago and demanded production. We told them we would not do so until, at the earliest, July 30, after we had given appropriate notice. They asked that we begin to produce some documents before then. * Interim production: We told them that, subject to an acceptable confidentiality order, we were prepared to produce documents which were reasonably requested by their subpoena that reside within California beginning July 30, on the condition that it would not operate as a waiver of any of our objections in later litigation. They said they would think about this offer and call us back. Wrighter called back this afternoon, saying that they wish us to continue with the plans to make an interim production. She did not promise not to file a lawsuit in the interim. Accordingly, we intend to prepare an acceptable confidentiality agreement sufficient to protect the production of EES's California documents, then send it to the AG with a letter that set forth the terms of any interim production under that agreement. If they do not agree to the confidentiality agreement, or the terms of the interim production, we will not produce any documents. We will send this letter to the AG early next week after we have distributed a copy for your review. ======================================================= This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message. To reply to our email administrator directly, send an email to postmaster@brobeck.com BROBECK PHLEGER & HARRISON LLP http://www.brobeck.com
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