Confidential communication occurs between two people with a legally recognized expectation of privacy. Examples include lawyer-client, doctor-patient, and religious officiant-congregant relationships. The communication must occur in a private setting with an intention of privacy. The term “privileged communication” is also used.
Confidential communication is communication that occurs between two people who have a legally recognized expectation of privacy, in an environment and circumstances where such communication is clearly intended to be private. By law, neither party can be required to disclose the content of the communication, although if one party waives the right to confidentiality, the other can testify about the nature of the communication. Different types of professional and personal relationships are protected by law in this way.
The most obvious example is the lawyer-client relationship. When a client discusses something confidential with an attorney, it is considered confidential communication and cannot be shared with anyone else. Other examples are marital relationships, doctor-patient relationships, and relationships between religious officiants such as priests and their faithful. While many people think that confidential communications between religious officiants and congregants apply specifically to confession, they can also include other conversations that take place in a private setting, as not all faiths have confession, but all religious officiants offer counsel and advice. private.
Several things must be present for a communication to be considered confidential. First, the relationship must be clearly established legally. If someone seeks advice from a physician friend, this is not a confidential communication, unless the physician friend is specifically acting as a physician. Similarly, a person who consults a lawyer friend is not entitled to protection unless the friend is retained as legal counsel. Also, once a lawyer has been released from employment, conversations that take place thereafter are not protected.
Additionally, confidential communication must occur in a context where privacy was clearly intended. This could be somewhere like a private office or conference room. Conversely, if a patient chats with the doctor in a waiting room, or the attorney and client have a conversation in a lobby, this is not considered confidential communication because there has been no attempt to ensure privacy . Normally, if a third party is present, the discussion is not confidential, unless the third party is necessary for the conversation to take place, such as an interpreter for a foreign language speaker or an assistant for a person with a disability .
The term “privileged communication” is also sometimes used to refer to this type of communication. People who want to confirm that a discussion is privileged can declare that they consider the communication privileged and confidential, such as for example on the envelope of a letter that is considered confidential.
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