Opinion ID: 1974716
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: Under D.C.Code § 11-721(a)(1) (1989), this court has jurisdiction to review all final orders and judgments of the Superior Court. An order is final only if it disposes of the whole case on its merits so that the court has nothing remaining to do but to execute the judgment or decree already rendered. McBryde v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., 221 A.2d 718, 720 (D.C. 1966). To be reviewable, a judgment or decree must not only be final but also complete, that is, final not only as to all parties, but as to the whole subject matter and all the causes of action involved. District of Columbia v. Davis, 386 A.2d 1195, 1198 (D.C.1978). The orders disqualifying Mr. Mauro and Mr. Drake from participating further in these cases are obviously not final orders, since both cases remain alive on the trial court docket and are a long way from being tried. The parties all agree that if the orders are appealable at all, the appeals must be brought within a narrow but well-recognized exception to the rule against appeals from non-final orders known as the collateral order doctrine. Stein v. United States, 532 A.2d 641, 643 (D.C. 1987), cert. denied, 485 U.S. 1010, 108 S.Ct. 1477, 99 L.Ed.2d 705 (1988). That doctrine is a creature of the Supreme Court which this court, like many others, has chosen to adopt. It was first articulated in Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949), when the Court identified a small class of orders which finally determine claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action, too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated. Id. at 546, 69 S.Ct. at 1225-26. As refined in later cases, the collateral order doctrine came to have three requirements, all of which must be met before an interlocutory order may be appealed. To be appealable under Cohen, a trial court order must, at a minimum, meet three conditions. First, it must conclusively determine the disputed question; second, it must resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action; third, it must be effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment. Flanagan v. United States, 465 U.S. 259, 265, 104 S.Ct. 1051, 1055, 79 L.Ed.2d 288 (1984), quoting Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 468, 98 S.Ct. 2454, 2458, 57 L.Ed.2d 351 (1978). The question we must decide is whether an order disqualifying counsel in a civil case is immediately appealable under the Cohen collateral order doctrine. In answering this question, we are faced with a conflict between our own earlier statements and a more recent Supreme Court opinion on the subject. This court said in Urciolo v. Urciolo, 449 A.2d 287 (D.C. 1982), that an order disqualifying counsel from participating in an ongoing case is appealable as a collateral order. Id. at 290 (footnote omitted). In Urciolo we echoed our earlier holding in American Archives' Counsel v. Bittenbender, 345 A.2d 487, 490 (D.C.1975). In both Urciolo and Bittenbender we applied the three-part Cohen test and concluded that orders disqualifying counsel in civil cases are `effectively unreviewable' on appeal from a final judgment. Urciolo, supra, 449 A.2d at 290; Bittenbender, supra, 345 A.2d at 490; see also Borden v. Borden, 277 A.2d 89, 90 (D.C.1971) (trial court order appointing counsel held to be appealable as a collateral order). The Supreme Court has discussed the appealability of orders disqualifying counsel in several cases, most recently in a decision which we find more persuasive than our own earlier opinions to the contrary. In the first of these cases, Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Risjord, 449 U.S. 368, 377-378, 101 S.Ct. 669, 675, 66 L.Ed.2d 571 (1981), the Court held that the denial of a motion to disqualify an attorney in a civil case was not appealable as a collateral order because it was not effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment, the third of the three requirements for immediate appealability outlined in Coopers & Lybrand, supra . [5] Three years later, in Flanagan v. United States, supra , the Court decided a question left open in Firestone and held that an order disqualifying counsel in a criminal case did not meet either the second or the third requirement; i.e., it did not resolve an issue completely separate from the merits of the action, 465 U.S. at 269, nor was it effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment, id. at 268, 104 S.Ct. at 1056 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). [6] Finally, in Richardson-Merrell, Inc. v. Koller, 472 U.S. 424, 440, 105 S.Ct. 2757, 2766, 86 L.Ed.2d 340 (1985), decided the following year, the Court extended Flanagan to encompass civil as well as criminal cases and held that an order disqualifying counsel in a civil case failed to satisfy the second and third elements of the Coopers & Lybrand test. As to the second, the Court held that orders disqualifying counsel because counsel will probably have to testify at trial (the situation in the Brown case) are inextricable from the merits because they involve an assessment of the likely course of the trial and the effect of the attorney's testimony on the judgment. Richardson-Merrell, supra, 472 U.S. at 439, 105 S.Ct. at 2765 (citation omitted). Orders grounded on attorney misconduct would likewise be entwined with the merits, as the Richardson-Merrell case itself showed: the Court of Appeals, in reversing the disqualification order, exhaustively discuss[ed] the merits of the plaintiff's claim. Id. at 439-440, 105 S.Ct. at 2765. As to the third requirement, the Court held that because prejudice is not a prerequisite to reversal of a judgment following erroneous disqualification of counsel ... the propriety of the trial court's disqualification order can be reviewed as effectively on appeal of a final judgment as on an interlocutory appeal. Id. at 438, 105 S.Ct. at 2765. The reasoning of the Supreme Court in Richardson-Merrell is more thorough, and ultimately more persuasive, than our own more limited analysis in Urciolo and Bittenbender. Because the collateral order doctrine was created and has been developed exclusively by the Supreme Court, we would normally look to that Court's decisions in determining whether the doctrine applies in a given case. We certainly endorse the policy goal articulated in the Richardson-Merrell decisionthe prevention of `piecemeal appellate review of trial court decisions which do not terminate the litigation.' 472 U.S. at 430, 105 S.Ct. at 2761 (citation omitted). The cases we cited in a footnote in Urciolo as agree[ing] that orders granting disqualification motions are appealable collateral orders [7] have been nullified as precedents by Richardson-Merrell. That decision tells us, in the clearest possible terms, that orders disqualifying counsel in civil cases are not appealable in the federal courts as collateral orders under Cohen. We hold today that they are not appealable in the District of Columbia courts either. To the extent that Urciolo and Bittenbender are inconsistent with Richardson-Merrell, they are now expressly overruled.