Court Opinion

ID: 9430095
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:56.937034+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:22.977954
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
concurring.
A fundamental premise of the adversary system is that individuals have the right to retain the attorney of their choice to represent their interests in judicial proceedings. To be sure, that right is qualified. A court need not, for example, permit an individual to retain anyone at all, regardless of qualifications, to represent him in open court. Nor must a court continue to permit an individual to be represented by an attorney who by his misconduct in open court has threatened the integrity of the proceedings. Nonetheless, if an attorney is adequately qualified and has not otherwise acted so as to justify disqualification, the client need not obtain the permission of the court or of his adversary to retain the attorney of his choice.
I share the view of the Court and the Court of Appeals below that the tactical use of attorney-misconduct disqualification motions is a deeply disturbing phenomenon in modern civil litigation. When a trial court mistakenly disqualifies a party’s counsel as the result of an abusive disqualification motion, the court in essence permits the party’s opponent to dictate his choice of counsel. As the court below recognized, this result is in serious tension with the premises of our adversary system, see 237 U. S. App. D. C. 333, 352, 737 F. 2d 1038, 1057 (1984), and some remedy must therefore be avail*442able to correct the error. The question before the Court today is whether that remedy is an automatic interlocutory appeal or whether instead the remedy is simply a stringent review of the disqualification decision on review of the final judgment in the case.
The Court holds that the plaintiff in this case must undergo the burdens of trial without the counsel of her choice before being permitted to obtain appellate review of what may well be an erroneous disqualification. As the Court points out, this result is in accord with our recent decisions in Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Risjord, 449 U. S. 368 (1981), and Flanagan v. United States, 465 U. S. 259 (1984). Today’s case, however, is somewhat different from both of those cases. Respondent’s attempt to vindicate her right to the attorney of her choice is substantially more compelling than the claim in Firestone of a “right” not to have one’s opponent represented by counsel who has misbehaved. And permitting an interlocutory appeal here would not implicate the strong public interest in speedy disposition of criminal trials that influenced the decision in Flanagan. Nonetheless, a litigant’s right to retain an attorney of choice can be protected on review of final judgment if appellate courts are willing when necessary to set aside verdicts — even when they result from lengthy civil proceedings. Moreover, today’s result could well give pause to a party considering an abusive disqualification motion, for an improper grant of such a motion could jeopardize an ultimate jury verdict in his favor. On the understanding that the courts of appeals will develop standards for reviewing final judgments that will effectively protect each litigant’s right to retain the attorney of choice, I join the Court’s opinion.