Formal Opinion 70
Revealing Address of Client by Attorney
(1960)

In your letter of February 9,1960, you request an opinion from the Legal Ethics Committee as to whether under the circumstances described in your letter it is proper for an attorney to reveal the address of his former client.

Your letter explains that you set up a composition of creditors for your clients, a man and wife. By this agreement, the husband was to pay to you a certain sum each month, and you secured an agreement of his creditors to permit you to prorate this monthly payment to apply upon the various obligations of your clients. You state that your clients failed to pay the monthly amounts and after several attempts to continue the plan, you had to withdraw and notify your clients and the creditors. Since withdrawing, you have been requested by the creditors to furnish them the last known address of your clients and you inquire whether to furnish this address would conflict with your obligations under the Canons of Ethics.

Your problem arises under Canon 37, which provides:

"It is the duty of a lawyer to preserve his clients' confidences. This duty outlasts the lawyer's employment, and extends as well to his employees; ***"

This exact question seems not to have come up before the American Bar Committee but that Committee did consider the question of revealing the whereabouts of a client who had fled the jurisdiction while on bail. In the course of the American Bar Legal Ethics Committee Opinion 155, it is stated:

"It is the duty of an attorney to maintain the confidence and preserve inviolate the secrets of his client and it is the general rule that when a client gives his address to his attorney while consulting him in a professional capacity on a business matter for the purpose of enabling the attorney to communicate with him in respect thereto, it is a privileged communication. However, there are some circumstances under which such a communication is not privileged for reasons founded on sound public policy. In such cases the attorney may not remain silent.

"When the communication by the client to his attorney is in respect to the future commission of an unlawful act or to a continuing wrong, the communication is not privileged. One who is actually engaged in committing a wrong can have no privileged witnesses, and public policy forbids that an attorney should assist in the commission thereof or permit the relation of attorney and client to conceal the wrongdoing."

This question, however, seems to have been directly decided by the New York City Legal Ethics Committee and the New York County Legal Ethics Committee. In Drinker on Legal Ethics it is stated: "A lawyer may not inform the collector of a failure of his client to disclose income, or of his client's address." In support of this statement, the author cites New York County Committee, Opinion 169. See Drinker, page 138.

At page 136, Drinker on Legal Ethics states:

"A lawyer may not disclose his client's funds or his whereabouts to the client's creditors, or to a public officer ..."

The author cites authority for restrictions on disclosing the whereabouts of a client from opinions of the New York City Legal Ethics Committee, Opinions 107 and 108.

We believe the correct interpretation of the Canon is that the residence or whereabouts of a client revealed to his attorney for the purpose of communicating with him in representing the client is a confidential communication, and that it is not proper for the attorney to reveal such information to creditors of a client or to other persons, unless the same is required by a superior obligation of the attorney. These exceptions arise where a client has escaped the jurisdiction of the court while on bail, or otherwise is hiding from the jurisdiction of the court under circumstances in which the lawyer's obligation to the court requires that he make such revelation. The exception may also arise where the client is perpetrating a fraud or some other act that would be such a wrong that would place a duty upon the attorney superseding his duty to his client not to reveal his whereabouts.

The facts set forth in your letter would indicate merely that your former client has failed to make the monthly payments as required under the composition with his creditors and does not seem to involve fraud or any other great wrong that would warrant an attorney in revealing confidences conveyed to him.

It is, therefore, the opinion of the Committee that it would be improper to reveal the address of the former client to his creditors under the facts set forth in your letter.

[See RPC 1.6, 4.2]