# Radiant Burners, Inc., an Illinois Corporation v. American Gas Association, Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company

> Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit · June 28, 1963 · 320 F.2d 314

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9449482

## Case

- **Full name:** RADIANT BURNERS, INC., an Illinois Corporation, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. AMERICAN GAS ASSOCIATION, Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company, Et Al., Defendants-Appellants
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
- **Decided:** June 28, 1963
- **Citations:** 320 F.2d 314; 7 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 714; 98 A.L.R. 2d 228; 1963 Trade Cas. (CCH) 70,827; 1963 U.S. App. LEXIS 4793
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Kiley
- **Judges:** Castle, Duffy, Hastings, Kiley, Knoch, Schnackenberg, Swygert
- **Cited by:** 145 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9449482

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- recognizing that corporations have the right to assert the attorney-client privilege like natural persons
- reversing district court and holding that attorney-client privilege is not limited to natural persons
- discussing the principles of the attorney-client privilege

## Opinion text

KILEY, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur.
Originally, in the attorney-client relationship, the client was a natural person, as were the patient, penitent, and spouse in the other pertinent relationships where the privilege has been recognized. But, as client, the natural person undoubtedly sought advice about matters other than his personal private affairs, which are so intimately involved in the other relationships.
The very fact of the attorney-client relationship connotes, among other mundane things, legal advice about economic affairs. The early relationship between the individual businessman and his attorney was personal in the sense that a natural person was the client, but generally not in the sense that the intimate private affairs of the penitent, patient or spouse are personal.
The corporation does not itself have attributes which give rise to the need of intimate advice, in the area of personal privacy, for which the natural person turns to confessor, doctor or spouse. It does, however, have an economic nature because of which it needs legal advice in the same way that the early individual needed, and his contemporary counterpart needs, that advice.
The corporation, as well as the individual, in seeking that advice, may of necessity communicate through its representa *325 tives secrets about its conduct in business. And in these necessitous circumstances, no good reason exists why the impartial administration of justice should not afford the corporation the protection of the privilege in appropriate cases.
In this light, I agree with the conclusion of Judge Hastings that the attorney-client privilege in its broad sense is available to corporations.
Since the defendant Association, a corporation, is a client, there is no reason, at this point, to exclude it from the holding of this court. It may have secrets which should be shielded from public gaze. On the other hand, it may be that, narrowly confined, 8 Wigmore, Evidence, 554 (McNaughton rev. 1961), the privilege cannot logically be extended to documents entrusted to the Association by its member corporations which, in turn, are entrusted by it to its attorney.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9449482. Public record. Not legal advice.