Last year, a federal grand jury in New Haven indicted four former senior executives of General Re Corporation and one former senior executive of AIG for their participation in a fraudulent scheme to manipulate AIG’s financial statements. Recently, three of the defendants issued multiple subpoenas to several insurance companies and their attorneys pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 17(c). The subpoenas were contested by both the government and the third party subpoena recipients.
Applying the legal standard set forth by the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Nixon, the district court concluded that the subpoenas were unenforceable because they sought materials outside the proper scope of Rule 17(c). Specifically, the materials sought by several of the subpoenas would only be useful as impeachment materials, and therefore failed Nixon’s admissibility requirement. Other subpoenas were to be found unenforceable because they failed Nixon’s relevancy requirement. United States of America v. Ferguson, Case No. 3:06cr137, (USDC D. Ct. Sept. 26, 2007).