Justia Legal Ethics Opinion Summaries

Articles Posted in Civil Litigation
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Defendant-respondent Stephen Lipworth won a judgment against Plaintiff-appellant Raj Singh, and successfully moved to amend the judgment to add certain aliases Singh used. The trial court then granted Lipworth's application for the sale of certain property that Singh transferred to his wife, who in turn transferred the property to Sunman Mehta. The trial court concluded that "Mehta" was another alias Singh adopted to avoid paying his creditors. The court set aside that series of transfers and ordered the property sold to satisfy the judgment. The order granting Lipworth's application for sale became final after various appeals were dismissed. In the case before the Court of Appeal, Singh, along with his wife Karen and "Mehta," sued Lipworth alleging he used "fraudulent representations" to persuade the trial court in the prior case that Singh was "hiding some properties from his creditors using different names such as Archana Singh and Suman Mehta." After several frivolous motions were decided against Singh, the trial court invited Lipworth to file a motion to require Singh to furnish security or have the case dismissed pursuant to the vexatious litigant statutes. Lipworth did so, and filed both a demurrer and a special motion to strike pursuant to the anti-SLAPP statute. The trial court found Singh to be a vexatious litigant with no reasonable probability of prevailing in the litigation because the lawsuit amounted to an impermissible collateral attack on a prior final judgment and post-judgment orders. The trial court ordered "Raj Singh aka Suman Mehta" to furnish security and dismissed the lawsuit as to plaintiff when no such security was furnished. The trial court then granted the anti-SLAPP motion as to Karen Singh, and awarded attorney fees and costs. Plaintiffs appealed to the Court of Appeal, and Lipworth filed a motion for sanctions against plaintiffs and plaintiffs' counsel pursuant to section 907 and rule 8.276 for bringing a frivolous appeal. The Court of Appeals concluded sanctions were warranted in this case. The Court therefore affirmed the judgment and imposed sanctions against plaintiffs and their attorney. View "Singh v. Lipworth" on Justia Law

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Davis Wright Tremaine LLP ("DWT") challenged a trial court order compelling production of certain materials that, in DWT’s view, were protected under the attorney-client privilege. The trial court issued the order in the context of a legal malpractice action against DWT by a former client. The materials that are the subject of the order are communications between DWT’s designated in-house counsel and the lawyers in the firm who had represented the former client, and concern how actual and potential conflicts between the lawyers and the former client should have been handled. The trial court concluded that all but three of the communications with the firm’s in-house counsel ordinarily would have been covered by the attorney-client privilege, but the court recognized a “fiduciary exception” to the attorney-client privilege, which arose out of the fact that the firm was attempting to shield its internal communications from a former client. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that the trial court correctly determined that the attorney-client privilege as defined in OEC 503 applied to communications between lawyers in a firm and in-house counsel. However, the trial court erred in recognizing an exception to OEC 503 that the legislature did not adopt in the terms of that rule. Accordingly, the Supreme Court issued a peremptory writ of mandamus ordering the trial court to vacate its order compelling production of materials related to those communications that it determined were otherwise subject to the attorney-client privilege. View "Crimson Trace Corp. v. Davis Wright Tremaine LLP" on Justia Law