Citing changed circumstances, a Georgia trial court judge reversed her order disqualifying the Duane Morris firm in a matter adverse to a corporate affiliate of a Duane Morris client. Originally, the firm agreed to represent two corporate affiliates within the McKesson family tree on the conditions that (1) the attorney client relationships ran only to the two companies and not to any other corporate affiliates; and (2) McKesson agreed in advance that the firm could be adverse to other affiliates.
McKesson had the waiver reviewed by independent counsel before signing it. When McKesson sought to disqualify the firm from being adverse to an affiliate in an unrelated matter, the Georgia trial court granted the motion without giving appropriate consideration to the signed waiver letter. However, the firm's representation of the McKesson affiliates since terminated and the court rescinded her disqualification order. This new order gets us to the correct result, but to do it the judge had to correct one legal error with another legal error. All's well that ends well?
The important point for the long run is that corporations and law firms shouldn't merely be permitted to enter into the types of arrangements that they did in this case, but rather courts should strongly urge them to decide these issues in advance. The Georgia trial court was completely out of step with the modern approach to these issues and although the court apparently thought it was doing a favor to corporate clients, it was doing the opposite.