Source: http://www.daniels.legal/category/class-action/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 04:54:04+00:00

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The appellate court cited Skarbrevik v. Cohen, England & Whitfield(1991) 231 Cal.App.3d 692, 709-710, saying “a conspiracy claim against an attorney is … proper if the attorney who conspires with a client to injure another violates his or her own duty to the plaintiff.” For example, a conspiracy claim might be brought when a corporation and its attorneys attempt to hide from potential investors the instances in which other investors have threatened litigation against the corporation. However, if a plaintiff attempts to assert a conspiracy claim based on duties owed by the opposing client, and not the opposing counsel, and the opposing counsel was acting within the scope of his or her professional responsibilities, the claim has no merit.
Here, the appellate court found the defendant-attorneys owed a duty to both the plaintiffs and the defendants. At the request of the defendants, the trial court directed the remediation funds for both properties be paid by the defendants, and placed in the trust fund of the defendant-attorneys. By holding the funds for the benefit of all parties, the defendant-attorneys assumed a duty to disburse the money equitably and without prejudice to the plaintiffs’ interest. The defendant attorneys, as agents of their law firm, breached their duty to the plaintiffs to abstain from interfering with the remediation process and distributed the remediation funds in a prejudicial manner only to their clients. One defendant attorney sent continual unapproved e-mails to the contractors, while another defendant attorney personally supervised and preformed work on the defendants’ property, in violation of a court order. The defendant-attorneys also distributed $115,000 from the trust account without the plaintiffs’ knowledge, the majority of which was spent on remediation of the defendants property, with little if any going toward the remediation of the plaintiffs’ property.
Continuing Representation and Tolling.As a general rule, the statute of limitations for legal malpractice claims is tolled during the time that an attorney continues to represent a client. A recent Court of Appeal decision, Lockley v. Law Office of Cantrell, Green, Pekich, Cruz & McCort, 91 Cal. App. 4th 875, 110 Cal. Rptr. 2d 877 (2001), demonstrates that where there is objective evidence of a continuing attorney-client relationship, tolling becomes an indefinite proposition. Lockley involved plaintiff Kim David Lockley, a former City of Seal Beach police officer of Korean descent who was subjected to racial taunts and harassment at work. When his brother became involved in legal problems out of state, the City targeted Lockley in an April 1988 internal affairs investigation and terminated him. Lockley appealed the firing to the civil service board, filed a workers’ compensation claim and filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint alleging racial discrimination.
Cantrell, Green, Pekich, Cruz & McCort (“Cantrell”) represented Lockley on his workers compensation claim. The City and Lockley entered into a compromise and release agreement (“C&R”) under which Lockley agreed to relinquish all claims against the City. For its part, the City agreed to process an application for retirement benefits for Lockley, treating him as having a non-work related disability and to notify the Public Employees Retirement System (“PERS”) that Lockley was entitled to retirement benefits. With the C&R in hand, Lockley resigned from the force and dropped all his claims.
The City reneged on its agreement. It notified PERS that Lockley was terminated for misconduct and delayed notifying PERS of Lockley’s entitlement to retirement benefits for four months, long enough to disqualify him.
Lockley revived his workers’ compensation claim. After a long episode of legal wrangling, the matter worked its way up to the Fourth District Court of Appeal, where Justice Sonenshine’s concurring opinion wondered aloud why Lockley’s attorney had not pursued a breach of contract claim after the City breached the C&R agreement.
Lockley sued Cantrell for legal malpractice on February 8, 2000. The trial court sustained a demurrer without leave to amend based on the statute of limitations after taking judicial notice of the modified opinion. The Second District Court of Appeal reversed.
(b) In an action based upon an instrument in writing, the effective date of which depends upon some act or event of the future, the period of limitations provided for by this section shall commence to run upon the occurrence of such act or event.
The statute was adopted in 1997 as the Legislature’s response to the companion cases of Neel v. Magana, Olney, Levy, Catchcart & Gelfand, 6 Cal. 3d 176, 98 Cal. Rptr. 837 (1971) and Budd v. Nixen, 6 Cal. 3d 195, 98 Cal. Rptr. 849 (1971), which established that delayed discovery and lack of actual (called “appreciable”) harm both acted to toll the statute of limitations.
In Neel, the Supreme Court acknowledged that introducing tolling into the limitations equation came with a cost.
We recognize that the instant ruling will impose an increased burden upon the legal profession. An attorney’s error may not work damage or achieve discovery for many years after the act, and the extension of liability into the future poses a disturbing prospect. On the other hand, when an attorney raises the statute of limitations to occlude a client’s action before that client has had a reasonable opportunity to bring suit, the resulting band of the action not only starkly works an injustice upon the client but partially impugns the very integrity of the legal profession.
The solution, the high court suggested, was for the Legislature to provide a limitation period for legal malpractice similar to that found in Section 340.5, the medical malpractice statute, which has a one year from date of discovery, four year absolute limit.
Section 340.6 adopted the one year/four year scheme as suggested in Neel. However, along with the notion of defined time limits are specific tolling mechanisms designed to extend the time frames in (1) absence of actual damage, (2) during continuing representation, (3) where there is misrepresentation by the attorney and (4) where physical or legal disability restricts the client.
An attorney’s special fiducial relationship with the client, combined with the reality that defective legal work will not always cause appreciable harm for sometime are the primary reasons why tolling is specifically incorporated in Section 340.6.
The purpose of the “continuous representation” rule is to avoid disrupting the attorney-client relationship by a lawsuit and to enable an attorney to correct or minimize an apparent error, while at the same time preventing lawyers from defeating malpractice claims by continuing to represent the client until the statute has run. Laird v. Blacker, 2 Cal. 4th 606, 618, 7 Cal. Rptr. 2d 550 (1992).
The Court of Appeal in Lockley applied an objective standard in analyzing whether Cantrell’s representation of Lockley met the standard for tolling.
“Continuity of representation ultimately depends, not on the client’s subjective beliefs, but rather on evidence of an ongoing mutual relationship and of activities in furtherance of the relationship.” The general rule is that the attorney’s representation does not end “until the agreed tasks or events have occurred, the client consents to termination or a court grants an application by counsel for withdrawal.” [Emphasis in original.]Lockley, supra, 91 Cal. App. 4th at 887-888, 110 Cal. Rptr. 2d 877.
Using the objective standard, the Court held that Lockley’s complaint stated a claim that avoided the statute of limitations by virtue of its allegations that Cantrell had continued to represent him until within one year of filing. “On appeal, Lockley contends that statute of limitations governing attorney malpractice claims was tolled while [Cantrell] continued to represent him. This is a correct statement of the law.” 91 Cal. App. 4th at 887.
In reaching its holding, the Second District panel decided it was not bound by the Fourth District’s earlier footnote implying that Cantrell’s representation of Lockley was not continuous. In a lengthy discussion of judicial notice doctrine, the Second District concluded that the additional footnote added to Justice Sonenshine’s concurring opinion did not meet the standard of being based on an adversary proceeding adjudicating a fact question and found no substantial evidence in the record to support the conclusion. The question of whether or not Cantrell’s representation was continuous, the Second District determined, remained in dispute.
Cantrell, for its part, argued that during the relevant period, it represented Lockley only on his workers’ compensation claim, not the C&R agreement. Since the two items were not the same specific subject matter, the continuing representation doctrine did not apply.
The Court of Appeal rejected that argument without difficulty. Distinguishing Foxborough v. Van Atta, 26 Cal. App. 4th 217, 229, 31 Cal. Rptr. 2d 525 (1994) (“the limitations period is not tolled when an attorney’s subsequent role is only tangentially related to the legal representation the attorney provided to the plaintiff”), in which a continuing representation was held as not occurring where the attorney was discharged, then rehired as an expert witness, the court found that Cantrell’s argument attempted to draw too fine a line in defining the limits of representation.
Lockley, supra, 91 Cal. App. 4th at 889, 110 Cal. Rptr. 2d 877.
The moral of the story is that in analyzing whether there is a continuing representation that will toll the statute of limitations, look to see if the attorney has continued to represent the client without interruption in the same capacity throughout the relationship.
As a practical matter, Lockley means that as long as there are objective facts pointing to the continuation of an attorney-client relationship past what would otherwise be a time barred by the statute of limitations, there will be an argument that the Section 340.6(a)(2) tolling provision applies and a claim is timely.
In your own practice, Lockley underlines the importance of documenting precisely the outlines of the attorney-client relationship in a fee agreement and the termination of that relationship in writing.
As counselors-at-law who are privileged to represent people in California’s legal system, we carry great responsibility. Section 340.6 and decisional law such as Lockley underline that a breach of that responsibility carries with it a consequence that the prudent lawyer should not ignore.
Greyhound Lines, Inc., appealed against a judgment dismissing Greyhound’s cross-complaint, alleging that CHP assumed a special relationship duty to the bus passengers. They argued that a special relationship was created between CHP and the bus passengers when the CHP operators assured the 911 callers that emergency assistance was on the way and then failed to properly input the dispatch codes. The appellate court found that a special relationship had not been formed between the CHP and the bus passengers. And in the absence of a special relationship, a person who has not created a peril has no duty to come to the aid of another.
The appellate court cited Clemente v. State of California 40 Cal.3d 213, 219 Cal.Rptr 445, 707 P.2d 818, saying a special relationship may be created when “CHP voluntarily assumes a protective duty toward a certain member of the public and undertakes action on behalf of that member thereby inducing reliance, when an express promise to warn of a danger induced reliance, or when the actions of CHP place a person in peril or increase the risk of harm.” For example, the CHP could be held liable if they made misrepresentations that induced a citizens’ detrimental reliance, placed a citizen in harm’s way, or lulled a citizen into false security and then withdrew essential safety precautions.
Here, the appellate court found that CHP did not either induce the bus passengers to rely on CHP to their detriment or increase their risk of harm. The non-action of the CHP 911 operators, i.e., their failure to include the lane blockage information in the dispatch, left the bus passengers in exactly the same position they already occupied. Without detrimental reliance by, or an increase in the risk of harm to, the bus passengers, no special relationship is formed.
Class Actions Help Address Common Problems.
A notice in the mail is usually how we learn that we might be connected to a class action. The notice might say that a claim has been made on our behalf, or that we can receive some benefit by mailing back a form. So, what is it all about, this “class action” thing and is it a good thing or a bad thing?
Class Actions are a Unique Class of Case.
In simplest terms, class actions are a way for groups of people with common problems to seek a common solution. Class actions typically seek to solve simple questions that impact large number of people.
So, that notice that comes in the mail is worth reading, because it means that someone is trying to determine if you have been harmed by a third party and, if so, how you might have been damaged.
Understanding Class Action Procedure is Important.
Class actions can be brought in either state of federal court. Though state courts remain an important forum for class action litigation, recent federal legislation has tended to make Class actions more of a federal area than traditionally.
Class actions start with the filing of a complaint. Generally, the complaint will have specifics about what it is that the class actions seek to address and what kind of remedies the plaintiff class is looking for. The class plaintiffs named in the complaint seek to be representatives for the entire class.
Resources for researching Class Actions.
When you get a class action notice in the mail, it will always contain certain types of information. Most importantly, the notice will include the names of the lawyers of both sides of the case. If you have questions, simply pick up the phone and call or, if available, use the Internet to find the informational website that is often set up to give class members the lastest scope on what is happening with the case.
The notice will also tell you where the case is being litigated and include the case name and docket number. With this information and a web browser, you can often log onto the court’s website and get detailed information about when the complaint was filed, what has happened in the case and any critical dates you should know about.
In the not so distant past, class actions might settle for a small discount or non-cash benefit to the class members, known as a “coupon settlement,” along with a fee for the attorneys. These coupon settlements have been criticized as not providing a real benefit to the class members.
The law has changed so the judges are now supposed to look hard at settlements to make sure the class is receiving something of substance where there is a legitimate legal claim. So read the notice closely. You may be pleasantly surprised that the legal system is working for you, just as it should.

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