Opinion ID: 2315135
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: attorney disqualification and attorney refusal to testify

Text: Garcia contends the trial court erred in refusing to disqualify attorney Musolino for violating disciplinary rules which, with exceptions not relevant here, forbid an attorney to accept (DR 5-101(B)) or continue (DR 5-102(A)) a representation in litigation if the attorney knows, or it is obvious, that the attorney (or an attorney in his or her firm) ought to be called as a witness for the client. On this record, the only possible issue arises under DR 5-102(A). After the litigation had begun, Garcia listed Musolino in his pretrial statement as a potential fact witness. Noting the problem, Judge Nunzio told counsel to work it out between themselves. As it turned out, with one exception that came to light on the eve of trial, every fact that Garcia's counsel wanted to establish through Musolino's testimony was established by other witnesses. The exception was counsel's desire, announced for the first time on the day of trial, to prove damages in part by introducing evidence, through Sharma, that on two occasions Musolino personally had made $100,000 offers on behalf of Llerena to purchase G.O., Inc.'s rights under the lease. Out of the presence of the jury, Musolino denied making such offers and argued that Garcia should not be allowed to elicit such testimony because there had been no indication of it during pretrial discovery. Musolino acknowledged that, if the court were to allow the evidence, either he or a member of his firm would have to take the stand to deny that any $100,000 offer had been made. The court excluded the testimony on another ground we have sustained, supra in Part II: that settlement offers, as such, were inadmissible. The DR 5-102(A) problem therefore evaporated. We accordingly discern no abuse of discretion in the court's denial of Garcia's motion to disqualify. It follows that the court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to require Musolino to testify. We reach a similar conclusion concerning the trial court's refusal to allow Garcia to call Lisa Dessel, Esq., who was associated with Musolino, as a fact witness. Garcia's counsel had concluded that her testimony would be unnecessary if the defense stipulated that she had authored a particular agreement between Llerena and Sharma at the time of Sharma's eviction. Although Garcia's counsel later changed his mind, arguing that Dessel's testimony was necessary to interpret the agreement, we perceive no abuse of discretion in the court's declaring that the document spoke for itself and thus in refusing to require Dessel to testify. Affirmed.