Peter J. Henning

Isadore Bellis was a partner in a small law firm who received a grand jury subpoena for the financial records of the partnership and sought to resist producing them by asserting his Fifth Amendment selfincrimination privilege.

The availability of the Fifth Amendment selfincrimination privilege to resist producing documents in response to a subpoena has depended on whether the government sought the records from an individual (or sole proprietorship) or from a larger business organization.