Judge Bradley S. Phillips, Case Number: 22STCV35068, Date: 2024-10-10 Tentative Ruling

Judge: Bradley S. Phillips, Case: 22STCV35068, Date: 2024-10-10 Tentative Ruling

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Case Number: 22STCV35068 Hearing Date: October 10, 2024 Dept: 26

TENTATIVE RULING:

Defendant’s motion to disqualify Plaintiff’s counsel, Reisner & King LLP, is denied.

Defendant lacks standing to seek counsel’s disqualification. The general rule is that “an attorney-client relationship between the complaining party and the attorney sought to be disqualified is a prerequisite to seeking disqualification.” Moreci v. Scaffold Solutions, Inc. (2021) 70 Cal.App.5^th 425, 432. Even if the Court applied the “minority” view with respect to standing, Defendant has not shown an “ethical breach [that] is ‘manifest and glaring’ and so ‘infects the litigation in which disqualification is sought that it impacts the moving party’s interest in a just and lawful determination of [its] claims.’” Id. at 433. Defendant’s lack of standing alone warrants denial of the motion.

In addition, however, Defendant has not shown any ethical breach. Defendant has not shown that Plaintiff’s counsel’s representation of Mr. Decuir in this matter is materially adverse to the interests of its former client, Mr. Davoudi. See California Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.9(a). Nor has it shown that the circumstances present here present “a substantial risk that the lawyer’s representation of [Mr. DeCuir] would be materially and adversely affected by the lawyer’s own interests or by the lawyer’s duties to [Mr. Davoudi].” Sharp v. Next Entertainment, Inc. (2008) 163 Cal.App.4^th 410, 425-426.

Defendant argues that Plaintiff’s counsel’s “representation of Davoudi … provided significant exposure to Defendant’s organizational structure and policies (thus presuming the possession of confidential information” (Mtn. at 8) and that “misuse of confidential information from [Plaintiff counsel’s] representation of Davoudi to the detriment of Arup and the integrity of the judicial system is near-certain” (Reply at 10). The Court fails to understand how information about Defendant obtained by Plaintiff’s counsel in its representation of Mr. Davoudi adverse to Defendant could constitute “confidential information” for this purpose. Defendant has not shown that any protective order existed in the earlier case; and, even if there were one, the Court would presume that counsel would abide by it. The only relevant “presumption of knowledge of confidential information” that could arise here would be presumption of counsel’s knowledge of confidential information about counsel’s former client, Mr. Davoudi, not about Defendant. It is certainly not the law that an attorney who represents one client in a matter adverse to a company is then precluded from representing other clients adverse to that company because the attorney may have learned about the company in the first representation, even if the matters are related.

Even if Defendant had standing, and even if some ethical breach vis-à-vis Mr. Davoudi had been shown, the Court would deny the motion on equitable grounds. Defendant delayed for nearly two years in bringing this motion, although it has known throughout that time that Mr. Davoudi would likely be a witness in this case and that Plaintiff’s counsel previously represented him. See Liberty National Enterprises, L.P. v. Chicago Title Ins. Co. (2011) 194 Cal.App.4^th 839. The delay certainly destroys any credibility of Defendant’s purported concerns now about counsel’s knowledge of “confidential information,” given that Defendant has known since March 2022 both that Reisner & King represents Plaintiff and that they had represented Mr. Davoudi in the prior litigation in which such information was purportedly acquired (before March 2022).