Opinion ID: 1230281
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Duty of Loyalty and Collective Bargaining

Text: (12) At the heart of the conflict between attorney rights and responsibilities posed by this case is the conflict between the attorney-client relationship on the one hand, and the collective bargaining relationship between employer and (organized) employees on the other. Until relatively recently, the legal profession looked askance at attorneys joining unions or other employee associations. In 1966, the American Bar Association Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (hereinafter the ABA Committee) opined that a United States government attorney could not, consistent with ethical responsibilities, join a union. (2 ABA Informal Ethics Opns., opn. No. 917 (Jan. 25, 1966) p. 65.) As the committee explained, the attorney owes undivided loyalty to the government agency for which he or she works, and by becoming a member of a labor union the attorney assumes obligations which may at times be incompatible with his obligation to his client. ( Id. at p. 66.) [7] One year later, however, the ABA Committee essentially reversed its position. In informal opinion No. 986, the ABA Committee acknowledged that Generally speaking, the idea of lawyers belonging to or joining together in labor unions is basically contrary to the spirit of the Canons of Ethics because of the conflict with the duty owed the client. (2 ABA Informal Ethics Opns., opn. No. 986 (July 3, 1967) p. 144.) However, the ABA Committee recognized that the general principle was no longer universally applicable. [I]t is realized that the number of lawyers who represent single employer clients, for example governmental agencies and corporations, has increased substantially in recent years and will undoubtedly continue to increase in the future. The relationship of a lawyer who is employed by a corporation or by a governmental agency to his client in terms of compensation is different from that of the lawyer who represents in his daily practice ... a number of different clients.... Such lawyers have one client only, do not charge fees for their individual work and their compensation generally is not related to particular individual assignments they perform, but is rather related to the overall services which they perform. This differentiates them from those lawyers employed in a general practice of law where they perform services for a number of different clients. It is our opinion, therefore, that lawyers who are paid a salary and who are employed by a single client employer may join an organization limited solely to other lawyer employees of the same employer for the purpose of negotiating wages, hours, and working conditions with the employer client so long as the lawyer continues to perform for his employer client professional services as directed by his employer in accordance with the provisions of the Canons of Ethics. Such a lawyer would not have the right to strike, to withhold services for any reasons, to divulge confidences or engage in any other activities as a member of such a union which would violate any Canon (2 ABA Informal Ethics Opns., opn. No. 986, supra, p. 45; accord, Cal. Compendium on Prof. Responsibility, L.A. County Bar Assn. Formal Opn. No. 337 (June 14, 1973) p. 35.) In 1975, the ABA Committee again revisited the ethical questions related to an attorney's union activities. In informal opinion No. 1325, the ABA Committee considered the propriety of strikes by attorneys who are employed by a single employer in public or private practice. The ABA Committee began by recalling its neutral position on the question of attorney membership in employee associations consisting only of attorneys. That position had since been codified in the American Bar Association's Model Code of Professional Responsibility, EC 5-13, which now states in part that Although it is not necessarily improper for a lawyer employed by a corporation or similar entity to be a member of an organization of employees, he should be vigilant to safeguard his fidelity as a lawyer to his employer, free from outside influences. As informal opinion No. 1325 explains, while joining an employee organization violates no specific American Bar Association disciplinary rule, there is the potential of violating several rules, such as DR 6-101 (A)(3), proscribing neglect of a legal matter entrusted to a lawyer, DR 7-101 (A)(2), forbidding a lawyer to intentionally fail to carry out a contract for employment with a client, and DR 7-101 (A)(3), prohibiting a lawyer to intentionally prejudice or damage his client during the course of the professional relationship. (ABA Recent Ethics Opns., informal opn. No. 1325 (Mar. 31, 1975) p. 2.) The ABA Committee thereupon adopted what may be called a pragmatic approach to the question of strikes and other collective bargaining matters. If the attorney's strike leads to the neglect or intentional sabotage of the employer/client's affairs, then the attorney would have violated his or her professional obligations as embodied in the disciplinary rules cited above, and would be subject to discipline. However, in some situations participation in a strike might be no more disruptive of the performance of legal work than taking a two week's vacation might be. ( Ibid. ) Although we do not necessarily endorse the ABA Committee's position on the permissibility of strikes for government attorneys, we find its approach to the question of employee organization among these attorneys to be essentially correct. First, we do not find that government attorneys who organize themselves into associations pursuant to statute and who proceed to bargain collectively with their employer/clients are per se in violation of any duty of loyalty or any other ethical obligation. The growing phenomenon of the lawyer/employee requires a realistic accommodation between an attorney's professional obligations and the rights he or she may have as an employee. Moreover, we follow the ABA Committee's approach to determining when an attorney, in pursuit of an employee association's goals, oversteps ethical boundaries. That occurs when the attorney violates actual disciplinary rules, most particularly rules pertaining to the attorney's duty to represent the client faithfully, competently, and confidentially. In California, those duties are found principally in Rule 3-110, which prohibits a member from intentionally, recklessly or repeatedly fail[ing] to perform legal services with competence. An attorney, in pursuing rights of self-representation, may not use delaying tactics in handling existing litigation or other matters of representation for the purpose of gaining advantage in a dispute over salary and fringe benefits. (See Cal. Compendium on Prof. Responsibility, pt. II, State Bar Formal Opn. No. 1979-51.) Indeed, an attorney who [w]illfully delays [a] client's suit with a view to his [or her] own gain is guilty of a misdemeanor. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6128, subd. (b); see Silver v. State Bar (1974) 13 Cal.3d 134, 141 [117 Cal. Rptr. 821, 528 P.2d 1157].) In other words, in determining whether an action taken by an attorney or employee association violates the attorney's ethical obligations, we look not to whether the action creates antagonism between the attorney/employee and the client/employer, since such antagonism in the labor relations context is unfortunately commonplace; rather, we seek to ascertain whether an attorney has permitted that antagonism to overstep the boundaries of the employer/employee bargaining relationship and has actually compromised client representation. (10c) The County concedes that the Association and its members do have rights under the MMBA, but claims that these do not include authority to sue when their rights are violated. To fend off the argument that these collective bargaining guaranties would be meaningless without a judicial remedy, the County argues the Association has alternative effective means for enforcing the rights of its members, most notably by virtue of the fact that the attorneys have unparalleled access to county officials, which they can use to [exert] pressure on the County to reach an agreement regarding wages. Whether or not sound, that argument is beside the point. The ability of the Attorneys to influence the Board by informal means is one that predates, and exists independently of, the formal rights granted them under the MMBA. If the Attorneys are deprived of any formal means to enforce their rights, then these rights are no more meaningful than they were prior to the passage of the MMBA. Indeed, if the County's logic were followed, the Attorneys could be discharged for simply joining an employee association under the MMBA, and would have no ability to sue, despite the County's clear violation of statute, and no recourse other than the informal lobbying of the Board. Therefore, the denial of the Attorneys' right to sue for MMBA violations would represent not a compromise between collective bargaining rights and professional obligations, as the County contends, but a de facto judicial nullification of those rights. The only realistic accommodation between the enforcement of statutory guaranties under the MMBA and the enforcement of the Attorneys' professional obligations in this situation is to permit a petition for writ of mandate, as would be permitted to other public employees, while at the same time holding the Attorneys to a professional standard that ensures that their actual representation of their client/employer is not compromised. We therefore hold that attorneys employed in the public sector, who exercise their statutory right to sue to enforce rights given them by the MMBA, do not in such capacity violate their ethical obligations to their employer/client. [8] In so holding, we emphasize that attorneys in such circumstances are held to the highest ethical obligations to continue to represent the client in the matters they have undertaken, and that a violation of their duty to represent the client competently or faithfully, or of any other rule of conduct, will subject those attorneys to the appropriate discipline, both by the employer and by the State Bar. [9] In announcing this rule, we are not unmindful of the fact that attorneys suing their clients, in any circumstance, put a strain on the attorney/client relationship, and may tend to diminish the client's confidence in their attorneys' loyalty. But we must also acknowledge, as is obvious in the record of the present case, that the hostility between an attorney/employee and the client/employer predated and to some extent gave rise to the lawsuit. The MMBA is intended not to exacerbate conflict between employers and employees, but to provide the peaceful and ordered means for resolving those conflicts by promoting full communication between public employers and their employees. (Gov. Code, § 3500.) The Legislature may have decided that the benefits to public employee/employer relations of including attorneys within the MMBA's protections outweighed potential burdens on the attorney/client relationship. In any event, we cannot say that the Legislature, in extending these means of conflict resolution to public employee attorneys in arguably managerial roles, put such a strain on the attorney/client relationship as to compel the conclusion that the authorization of such lawsuits violates the constitutional separation of powers between the Legislature and the Judiciary. [10]