John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Google Refuses Texas AG’s Request for Business Documents

Kellbot

So much for Google’s promise to cooperate with the Texas attorney general’s investigation of its business practices. With that pledge now two years in the past and gathering dust, the company is taking a decidedly different approach to Texas AG Greg Abbott’s repeated requests for documents it has allegedly been withholding from his office. Having first requested more time to produce the documents demanded of it, Google is now simply refusing to turn them over.

In a legal filing Tuesday, Google answered the suit Abbott filed against it in June demanding some 14,500 internal documents it has been witholding from his office, citing attorney-client privilege by once again arguing that they are protected communications. The email discussions Abbot has requested are indeed privileged, and Google is justified in keeping them under wraps, the company said in its filing.

Abbott’s office will undoubtedly take issue with Google’s response, and for the same reasons it sued the company in June: Many of the documents Google claims as attorney-client privileged aren’t protected because they either A) were never sent to an actual attorney, or B) were not accompanied by a request for legal review. As Abbott argued in his suit, “Google has not met its burden of demonstrating that the privilege is applicable to many of the documents withheld.”

Reached for comment, Google reiterated the statement it made in June: “We have shared hundreds of thousands of documents with the Texas Attorney General, and we are happy to answer any questions that regulators have about our business.”

News of the company’s filing was first reported by Mlex.

(Image courtesy of Kellbot)

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