b. Editor

Courts in the Second Circuit have extended the privilege to editors.

In Lipinski v. Skinner, 781 F. Supp. 131 (N.D.N.Y. 1991), plaintiff was arrested and forced to undergo HIV testing. Plaintiff tested positive for HIV. The Binghamton Press published an article stating that the plaintiff was the first inmate in the Broome County jail with AIDS. Plaintiff sued the police and jail officials alleging that they violated the law by forcing him to take an HIV test and failing to protect his confidentiality. The author of the article stated in a deposition that one of her editors at the paper told her to investigate reports of an inmate with AIDS and that the sheriff confirmed that the plaintiff had tested positive. The author had two editors at the paper, and she did not state which editor gave her the information. Plaintiff subpoenaed testimony from both of the author's editors to determine which editor gave the author the lead. The court held that plaintiff satisfied the Burke three-prong test to overcome the privilege and ordered that the newspaper's motion to quash the subpoenas against the editors be denied. Id. at 138-139. Plaintiff's discovery was limited to questions about who initially disclosed the information regarding plaintiffs' HIV test to the newspaper. Id. at 140.

Additionally, in In re Welling, 40 F. Supp. 2d 491 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), a Barron's associate editor wrote an article that led attorneys in a securities fraud cases to believe she had relevant evidence. Her motion to quash the subpoena was denied. After the trial court decision, the associate editor tried to have herself held in contempt so she could appeal the decision to not quash the subpoena. The district court did not reach the merits of the decision, finding she could not be held in contempt because the deadline for complying with the subpoena had not yet been fixed, so she had not yet disobeyed a court order. Id. at 493-94.