In McDermott, Will & Emery v. Superior Court (2000) 83 Cal.App.4th 378, the Court of Appeal concluded that shareholders of a corporation could not bring a legal malpractice action against the corporation's outside counsel because the attorney-client privilege?absent the corporation's waiver thereof--would prevent outside counsel from mounting "any meaningful defense." (Id. at p. 381.) The McDermott court reasoned: "A derivative lawsuit for malpractice against corporate outside counsel raises unique attorney-client privilege issues. Because the shareholders are not the holder of the privilege, they do not effect a waiver of that privilege merely by filing their action on the corporation's behalf. As a result, in the absence of a waiver by the corporate client, the third party attorney is effectively foreclosed from mounting any meaningful defense to the shareholder derivative action. Accordingly, and for the reasons expressed herein, we hold such a derivative action against the corporation's outside counsel, necessarily brought in equity, cannot proceed." (Ibid.) The McDermott court concluded that the nature of such an action required dismissal, reasoning, "We simply cannot conceive how an attorney is to mount a defense in a shareholder derivative action alleging a breach of duty to the corporate client, where, by the very nature of such an action, the attorney is foreclosed, in the absence of any waiver by the corporation, from disclosing the very communications which are alleged to constitute a breach of that duty." (McDermott, supra, 83 Cal.App.4th at p. 385.) The McDermott court noted that its reasoning was similar to the rationale underlying the rule prohibiting assignments of legal malpractice actions--namely, that a defendant in such an assigned action would be unable to defend itself in the absence of a waiver from the assigning client. (Id. at p. 385.) In McDermott, the court held that dismissal was proper in a case in which the plaintiff brought a claim that, by its very nature, necessitated that the defendant disclose privileged or confidential information in order to present "a meaningful defense." (McDermott, supra, 83 Cal.App.4th at p. 381)