Lockheed Lawyer Who Gave Privileged Materials to EEOC Gets Trial

A jury must decide whether Lockheed Martin Corp. fired a Black female in-house lawyer because she accused it of race discrimination or because she shared attorney-client and other privileged information with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a Minneapolis federal judge ruled.

There’s evidence the company “lured” Daniel’la Deering into providing the documents to the job rights agency “so that it could terminate her employment,” the US District Court for the District of Minnesota said Tuesday. It noted that Deering had attached the confidential and privileged documents to her internal appeal of a performance review she disagreed with.

And an outside attorney Deering retained had referenced the documents as “key evidence” while trying to negotiate with Lockheed a settlement of her discrimination allegations before going to the EEOC, the court said.

The documents included communications with internal business partners and lawyers, human resources personnel, and outside counsel, and Deering acknowledged that they contained “law-related/privileged” material, the court said. She believed the documents were the best evidence” she had to refute her supervisor’s allegedly biased assessment of her performance in 2017, the court said.

Lockheed thus knew the content of the documents and apparently didn’t caution Deering or her lawyer against using the information “in any possible future” legal action, Judge David S. Doty said. It also didn’t take issue with the fact that her lawyer, as a third party, had access to the confidential and privileged materials, the judge said.

But Lockheed may have simply failed to “envision Deering, as corporate counsel,” would attach “such sensitive documents to her EEOC” charge and thus felt no need to caution her against the disclosure, the court said.

Lockheed was entitled to summary judgment on Deering’s claims that race caused her to receive a lower-than-warranted performance review in 2017, to be denied promotion to vice president, and to be placed “in a limited role as labor and employment counsel,” which allegedly hindered her promotion opportunities, the court said.

Among other things, the 2017 performance review reflected Deering’s role in an age discrimination case that resulted in a $51.6 million verdict against Lockheed, Doty said. She acknowledged that her boss, who is White, also received a lower performance rating because of that case, the judge said.

Halunen Law, Avisen Legal PA, and Innova Law Group PLLC represent Deering. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP and Nilan Johnson Lewis PA represent Lockheed.

The case is Deering v. Lockheed Martin Corp., D. Minn., No. 0:20-cv-01534, 8/30/22.