Martha Coakley was once a district attorney in Massachusetts, and her office was inside a state courthouse. That courthouse apparently had health and safety issues, so Coakley brought a lawsuit against the Commonwealth to force the government to take remedial measures.
Now here's the interesting part. Coakley was subsequently elected to become Attorney General of Massachusetts while the case against the Commonwealth was pending. As AG, her office became constitutionally responsible for defending the case in which she was the named plaintiff.
The question is: what is she ethically required to do? (A recent Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly story covers the facts in somewhat more detail, but the story is only available to subscribers. You can find it on Westlaw at 2008 WLNR 9544593.)
It seems pretty obvious to me that Rule 1.9 precludes her from handling the case herself. But if she screens herself off, can someone else in her office take charge of the case? Massachusetts does have a screening provision in its version of Rule 1.10, but it applies only if the lawyer who is being screened acquired no confidential information about the matter or had neither substantial involvement nor substantial material information relating to the matter. Ms. Coakley, as the named plaintiff, almost certainly doesn't fit these descriptions.
Technically, this would mean that the AG's office would have to hire outside counsel to handle the case. What troubles me about that result is that the AG's Office has a constitutional obligation to defend the Commonwealth, and hiring outside counsel comes at significant taxpayer expense. Indeed, if nobody in the AG's office could touch the case, who would make the ultimate decision about whether to settle? The governor? Outside counsel?
It seems to me that, although the rules technically prohibit screening here (Rule 1.11 is also not applicable, because AG Coakley was not moving between public and private practice), there is a decent argument that the normal conflicts restrictions should be loosened as a public policy matter in this particular case. Indeed, my understanding is that in some contexts (e.g., public defender offices), there is authority for the idea that the usual conflicts rules do not apply. Should there also be an exception for a case like AG Coakley's?