Opinion ID: 2537114
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Whether the circuit court erred in denying Reed's Motion for Partial Summary Judgment as to Sam's claim for breach of fiduciary duty.

Text: ¶ 29. This Court has stated that: [a] fiduciary duty must exist before a breach of the duty can occur. Fiduciary relationship is a very broad term embracing both technical fiduciary relations and those informal relations which exist wherever one person trusts in or relies upon another.[ [27] ] Black's Law Dictionary 564 (5th ed.1979). A fiduciary relationship may arise in a legal, moral, domestic, or personal context, where there appears on the one side an overmastering influence or, on the other, weakness, dependence, or trust, justifiably reposed. Miner v. Bertasi, 530 So.2d 168, 170 (Miss.1988); Matter of Estate of Haney, 516 So.2d 1359 (Miss. 1987). Lowery, 592 So.2d at 83. In the case sub judice, Sam's breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims are specifically predicated upon the existence of an attorney-client relationship. See footnote 16, supra. ¶ 30. An attorney-client relationship exists when: (1) A person manifests to a lawyer the person's intent that the lawyer provide legal services for the person; and (2)(a) The lawyer manifests to the person consent to do so, or (b) fails to manifest lack of consent to do so, knowing that the person reasonably relies on the lawyer to provide the services, or (c) a tribunal with power to do so appoints the lawyer to provide the services. Singleton v. Stegall, 580 So.2d 1242, 1244 n. 2 (Miss.1991) (citation omitted). As such, fee payment by the client to the attorney is not required. See id. at 1244. ¶ 31. Based upon our review of the specific facts presented, we are of the opinion that a professional relationship arose when the relationship evolved from a personal, ordinary type of relationship to that of attorney-client[,] for intervals of time. [28] Lowrey v. Smith, 543 So.2d 1155, 1160 (Miss.1989). As lifelong friends, Reed occasionally had provided Sam with free legal services over the years. Following Sam's termination, Reed opened a pro bono file, repeatedly referred to Sam as his client in correspondence with BancorpSouth, allegedly advised Sam and Jones, and attended Sam's deposition in September or October 2004. Thus, the professional relationship coexisted with the personal relationship for these intervals of time. Giving Sam the benefit of every reasonable doubt[,] Miller, 970 So.2d at 130, this Court concludes that, based on the undisputed facts presented, an attorney-client relationship existed between Sam and Reed for that period, just as during prior intervals, as a matter of law. Thus, Reed owed Sam a fiduciary duty. ¶ 32. Sam asserts that a genuine issue of material fact exists regarding a breach of fiduciary duty by Reed, based upon, inter alia, Reed's admissions of contemplating and maintaining a contemporaneous romantic and sexual relationship with [Rebecca] without disclosing the relationship and without immediately terminating the attorney-client relationship with [Sam].... Specifically, according to Sam: [t]he evidence supports the inescapable inference that at some point in time there was an intersection ... of Reed's knowledge of his own conflict of self interest and lustful desires to pursue a relationship with [Rebecca] and Reed's functioning as the attorney for [Sam] and as President/COO of Baker Donelson.... Once the first such intersection... occurred, both Reed and Baker Donelson [ [29] ] were on notice to avoid and disclose the conflict of interests. Sam maintains that such disclosure was avoided, in part, so as not to risk loss of [Sam] as a source of business. ¶ 33. Reed responds that the general rule ..., absent unusual circumstances, [is that] the scope of an attorney's fiduciary duty to his or her client does not exceed the scope of the legal representation. Reed maintains that some material relationship between an attorney's alleged tort and the alleged legal representation must exist for professional liability ... to attach. According to Reed: the affair was wholly unrelated to any limited attorney-client relationship that may have existed between Reed and [Sam] and was far outside the scope of alleged legal representation involving [Sam's] employment claim.[ [30] ] Moreover, the undisputed evidence, contrary to [Sam's] conclusory claim, is that Reed did not breach any client confidences, nor did he use any confidential information to seduce [Rebecca]. To hold otherwise would, according to Reed, subject attorneys to liability on `breach of fiduciary duty' claims in every instance in which an attorney, wholly apart from his or her professional relationship with his or her client, allegedly committed a tort against a person who also happened to be a client. ¶ 34. The relationship of attorney and client is one of special trust and confidence. The law requires that all dealings between them shall be characterized by the utmost fairness and good faith on the part of the attorney. Lowrey, 543 So.2d at 1161 (quoting Gwin v. Fountain, 159 Miss. 619, 126 So. 18 (1930)). An attorney-client relationship imposes the following duties, (a) the duty of care, (b) the duty of loyalty, and (c) duties provided by contract. Singleton, 580 So.2d at 1244. The duty of loyalty: is fiduciary in nature. In the present context its breach may take one of two forms. The first involves situations in which the attorney obtains an unfair personal advantage, such as acquiring property from a client; the second involves situations in which the attorney or other clients have interests adverse to the client in question. We have recently defined the lawyer's duty of loyalty to include a duty to: safeguard the client's confidences and property, avoid conflicting interests that might impair the representation, and not employ adversely to the clients powers conferred by the client-lawyer relationship. [ Singleton, 580 So.2d at 1245]. Tyson v. Moore, 613 So.2d 817, 823 (Miss. 1992). ¶ 35. This Court is unpersuaded by Sam's assertion that Reed failed to safeguard confidential information regarding Sam's impotence, and instead utilized such information to facilitate the seduction of [Rebecca]. First, this Court sees no genuine issue of material fact regarding the claim of exclusive confidentiality of such information, as Sam admitted that Rebecca was aware of his impotence prior to the affair. Second, the pre-existing, non-legal relationship existing between Sam and Reed, and finally the absence of a claim of impotence in the BancorpSouth complaint, [31] leads us to conclude that even were this Court to assume a confidential disclosure, it was unrelated to the representation undertaken and, thus, outside the attorney-client scope of this commingled relationship. Lowrey, 543 So.2d at 1160. Likewise, this Court is unpersuaded by Sam's argument that Reed utilized information concerning my financial condition... which was pertinent to my legal claims against BancorpSouth and relating to my eligibility for disability[,] in seducing Rebecca. Even when considering a motion for summary judgment, [a] conclusory, self-serving affidavit, unsupported by material facts relevant to the proposition at issue, is insufficient.... Dalton v. Cellular South, Inc., 20 So.3d 1227, 1233 (Miss.2009). ¶ 36. This Court has stated that a lawyer has a duty to inform his client of all matters of reasonable importance related to the representation or arising therefrom. Tyson, 613 So.2d at 827. See also Joe v. Two Thirty Nine Joint Venture, 145 S.W.3d 150, 159 (Tex.2004) (quoting Rankin v. Naftalis, 557 S.W.2d 940, 944 (Tex. 1977)) ([g]enerally, a lawyer's fiduciary duties to a client, although extremely important, `exten[d] only to dealings within the scope of the underlying relationship of the parties.'). No material facts have been presented to support that the subject affair was in any way related to the representation or arising therefrom. Tyson, 613 So.2d at 827. As no genuine issue of material fact exists on the issue of whether an adulterous affair between Reed and Rebecca constituted a breach of the fiduciary duty Reed owed to Sam, this Court concludes that the circuit court erred in denying partial summary judgment to Reed as to Sam's claim of breach of fiduciary duty.