Miss. R. Prof'l. Cond. 4.4
Miss. R. Prof'l. Cond. 4.4
Comment
Responsibility to a client requires a lawyer to subordinate the interests of others to those of the client, but that responsibility does not imply that a lawyer may disregard the rights of third persons. It is impractical to catalogue all such rights, but they include legal restrictions on methods of obtaining evidence from third persons and unwarranted intrusions into privileged relationships, such as the attorney-client relationship.
Paragraph (b) recognizes that lawyers sometimes receive documents that were mistakenly sent or produced by opposing parties or other lawyers. If a lawyer knows or reasonably should know that such a document was sent inadvertently, then this rule requires the lawyer to promptly notify the sender in order to permit that person to take protective measures. Whether the lawyer is required to take additional steps, such as returning the original document, is a matter of law beyond the scope of these rules, as is the question of whether the privileged status of a document has been waived. Similarly, this rule does not address the legal duties of a lawyer who receives a document that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know may have been wrongfully obtained by the sending person. For purposes of this rule, "document" includes e-mail or other electronic modes of transmission subject to being read or put into readable form.
Some lawyers may choose to return a document unread, for example, when the lawyer learns before receiving the document that it is inadvertently sent to the wrong address. Where a lawyer is not required by applicable law to do so, the decision to voluntarily return such a document is a matter of professional judgment ordinarily reserved to the lawyer. See Rules 1.2 and 1.4.
[Amended effective November 3, 2005.]
Code Comparison
DR 7-106(C)(2) provides that a lawyer shall not "ask any question that he has no reasonable basis to believe is relevant to the case and that is intended to degrade a witness or other person." DR 7-102(A)(1) provides that a lawyer shall not "take ... action on behalf of his client when he knows or when it is obvious that such action would serve merely to harass or maliciously injure another." DR 7-108(D) provides that "after discharge of the jury ... the lawyer shall not ask questions of or make comments to a member of that jury that are calculated merely to harass or embarrass the juror ..." DR 7-108(E) provides that "a lawyer shall not conduct ... a vexatious or harassing investigation of either a venireman or a juror."
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