Court Opinion

ID: 9792948
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:39:51.965429+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:02:01.963082
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Dissenting.
After learning that she would be unable to continue representing a client because her law firm also represented the person whom the client intended to sue, a lawyer withdrew from representation without advising the client of the time within which the client had to file suit to avoid the bar of the statute of limitations. The client has now sued the lawyer, alleging that the lawyer committed professional malpractice by failing to advise the client of the statute of limitations.
*292The majority immunizes the lawyer from any possible liability for malpractice. It does so by dividing clients into two classes and holding that lawyers may injure a second-class client with impunity so long as they do so to advance the interest of a first-class client. The majority’s division of clients into different classes and its authorization of lawyers injuring one client for the benefit of another is unprecedented, and it sends the message that any client who trusts a lawyer to act in accordance with his or her professional duties, or who expects that a lawyer who fails to do so will answer in damages, may be foolishly mistaken.
A lawyer who has conflicting responsibilities to two different clients is caught in a dilemma, because steps taken to protect the rights of one client may cause injury to the other. But the fact that the dilemma arose is surely not the fault of the clients. A lawyer assumes a duty of care to each client whom the lawyer agrees to represent; if the lawyer negligently breaches that duty, he or she should be liable to the client for any damage to the client caused by the breach. Because I cannot agree that a lawyer who negligently injures one client can escape liability simply by showing that the injuries advanced the interest of another client, I dissent.
I
This case comes to us on the trial court’s denial, upheld by the Court of Appeal, of summary judgment sought by Attorney Gail Flatt and her law firm, the defendants in this case. For purposes of the summary judgment motion (see Molko v. Holy Spirit Assn. (1988) 46 Cal.3d 1092, 1107 [252 Cal.Rptr. 122, 762 P.2d 46]), we assume the following facts to be true.
William Daniel engaged Attorney Flatt to file an action against Donald Hinkle.1 When Flatt later learned that her law firm already represented Hinkle in an unrelated matter,2 she concluded that her firm’s simultaneous representation of both Hinkle and Daniel created a conflict of interest, and she withdrew from her representation of Daniel. When she did so, she failed to advise Daniel regarding the running of the limitations period on his claim *293against Hinkle and failed to advise him that he should promptly seek new counsel to pursue his claim. By the time Daniel filed suit against Hinkle, the applicable statute of limitations had apparently expired. Anticipating a dismissal of his lawsuit on this ground, Daniel also sued Flatt and her law firm (hereafter collectively referred to as Flatt) for malpractice. Daniel asserted that, in not warning him to promptly retain new counsel and promptly file his action to avoid the bar of the statute of limitations, Flatt breached the duty of care she owed him.
II
The majority reaches the wrong result in this case because it mischaracterizes the issue before us. As posed by the majority, the issue is whether Attorney Flatt’s duty of loyalty to Hinkle can negate her “duty ... to inform [Daniel] of the statute of limitations applicable to [Daniel’s] proposed lawsuit or even of the advisability of seeking alternative counsel.” (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 278-279.) As I shall explain, by describing the issue in this fashion, the majority inaccurately depicts the duty that Flatt owed to her client, Daniel, and conflates two closely related but analytically distinct questions: whether Flatt owed a duty to Daniel, and if so, whether that duty required Flatt to advise Daniel of the statute of limitations and the necessity of retaining new counsel.
In this case, Daniel alleges that Attorney Flatt engaged in professional malpractice. The elements of a cause of action for professional malpractice, which include the duty that the professional owes to the client, are well established. They are: “(1) the duty of the professional to use such skill, prudence, and diligence as other members of his [or her] profession commonly possess and exercise; (2) a breach of that duty; (3) a proximate causal connection between the negligent conduct and the resulting injury; and (4) actual loss or damage resulting from the professional’s negligence. [Citations.]” (Budd v. Nixen (1971) 6 Cal.3d 195, 200 [98 Cal.Rptr. 849, 491 P.2d 433], italics added.) Thus, the duty owed by a professional is not a duty to perform any particular action (for instance, a lawyer advising a client of the applicable statute of limitations), but is simply a duty “to use such skill, prudence and diligence as other members of his [or her] profession commonly possess and exercise” (ibid/, see also Flowers v. Torrance Memorial Hospital Medical Center (1994) 8 Cal.4th 992, 998 [35 Cal.Rptr.2d 685, 884 P.2d 142]). Whether that standard of care obligates a professional to advise a client of a statute of limitations, or to perform any other specific action, is a factual question that will vary from case to case.
Therefore, when it states that in this case this court must determine whether Flatt owed a duty to advise Daniel regarding the statute of limitations on his lawsuit, the majority has misstated the issue. Platt’s duty, if it *294existed, was a duty to use the skill, prudence, and diligence commonly possessed by other attorneys, not a duty to advise Daniel about the statute of limitations; but if Flatt did owe Daniel that duty of care, then Flatt’s failure to advise Daniel of the statute of limitations may have been a breach of that duty. Thus, the two issues in this case are these: (1) whether Attorney Flatt owed a duty of care to Daniel; and (2) if so, whether that duty obligated Flatt to advise Daniel regarding the statute of limitations when Flatt withdrew from representation of Daniel. As discussed below, the majority’s failure to separately address these two questions leads it to the wrong result.
Ill
As I have pointed out, the first issue this court must resolve is whether Attorney Flatt owed Daniel a duty of care. It is unclear how the majority would answer this question, because the majority never squarely addresses it. In my view, once one assumes, as does the majority, that Daniel was Flatt’s client, the conclusion is inescapable that Flatt owed a duty of care to Daniel.
An attorney who enters into an attorney-client relationship assumes a duty of care toward that client. As this court stated nearly 100 years ago: “The relation between attorney and client is a fiduciary relation of the very highest character, and binds the attorney to most conscientious fidelity . . . .” (Cox v. Delmas (1893) 99 Cal. 104, 123 [33 P. 836].) This is true even when the attorney has entered into a similar relationship with another client whose interests are adverse.
While acknowledging, for purposes of summary judgment, that Daniel was Attorney Flatt’s client, the majority fails to recognize that the inevitable consequence of Daniel’s status as a client is that Flatt owed Daniel the same duty of care that she owed Hinkle and every other client. Instead, the majority myopically focuses solely on Flatt’s duty to Hinkle, and holds that her duty of loyalty to Hinkle “absolved her of a duty to provide any advice to Daniel adverse to the interests of Hinkle.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 281.)3
If the only relevant duty governing Flatt’s actions was her duty of loyalty to Hinkle, this would be a simple case: Flatt would be justified in doing all that she could to prevent Daniel from retaining new counsel and pursuing his litigation against Hinkle before the expiration of the applicable statute of limitations.
*295Flatt’s duties, however, were not one-sided, because both Daniel and Hinkle were her clients. Flatt owed each of her clients a duty of care; her duty to one did not abrogate her duty to another. (See Ishmael v. Millington (1966) 241 Cal.App.2d 520, 526 [50 Cal.Rptr. 592] [When a lawyer represents dual interests, “[t]he loyalty [the lawyer] owes one client cannot consume that owed to the other.”].) To hold otherwise would turn the status of client into a meaningless label.
Even if, as the majority concludes, Flatt would have violated her duty of loyalty to her client Hinkle by giving advice to Daniel when she withdrew from representing him, that fact does not absolve her of her duty of care to Daniel and it does not exonerate her from liability if she has breached that duty. That Flatt may have been forced to choose between her responsibilities to two clients provides no justification for immunizing her from liability if she did not act with the skill, prudence, and diligence that other members of the profession would have exercised under the circumstances. Daniel did not create the conflict. He was deprived of the services of the counsel of his choice through no fault of his own. The majority has advanced no reason why he should bear the loss resulting from the attorney’s resolution of the conflict.
The effect of the majority’s decision is to create two classes of clients, and to hold that the duties owed to the first-engaged client (here, Hinkle) not only can negate the duties owed to the second-engaged client (here, Daniel) but can also immunize the lawyer from liability for injuring the second-engaged client to advance the interests of the first-engaged client. This result is unprecedented in the law. Contrary to the majority’s view, neither the standards of professional conduct nor the body of tort law governing attorney malpractice recognize certain clients as more favored than others, nor do they authorize a lawyer to injure one client to advance the interests of another client.
IV
As I observed earlier, by becoming Daniel’s lawyer, Flatt assumed a duty of care to Daniel. I now consider the scope of that duty: under the facts of this case, was Flatt obligated to advise Daniel of the statute of limitations, or of the need to promptly retain new counsel to pursue his claim against Hinkle? As I shall discuss, this is a question of fact, which cannot be resolved on a motion for summary judgment.
Because of its “inherently situational” nature (see Flowers v. Torrance Memorial Hospital Medical Center, supra, 8 Cal.4th 992, 997), the determination whether the standard of care requires a lawyer to perform a particular *296action in a particular case is ordinarily a question that should be resolved by a jury after a trial, not by a court on a motion for summary judgment. As this court has stated recently, application of the standard of care to the facts of a case “is a task for the trier of fact if reasonable minds might differ as to whether the defendant’s conduct has conformed to the standard. [Citations.]” (Ramirez v. Plough, Inc. (1993) 6 Cal.4th 539, 546 [25 Cal.Rptr.2d 97, 863 P.2d 167].) In a case of professional malpractice, the standard of care against which the acts of the professional are to be measured generally requires expert testimony. (Flowers v. Torrance Memorial Hospital Medical Center, supra, 8 Cal.4th 992, 1001; Lipscomb v. Krause (1978) 87 Cal.App.3d 970, 975-976 [151 Cal.Rptr. 465]; Lysick v. Walcom (1968) 258 Cal.App.2d 136, 156 [65 Cal.Rptr. 406, 28 A.L.R.3d 368].)
Here, Daniel contends that Attorney Flatt breached her duty of care when, upon withdrawing from her representation of Daniel, she failed to advise him that the limitations period on his claim against Hinkle was running and that he should seek replacement counsel promptly. It is undisputed that Flatt did not give this advice. In order to grant summary judgment for Flatt on this ground, we would have to decide that no reasonable trier of fact could conclude that under these circumstances the duty of care Flatt owed to Daniel required her to warn Daniel about the statute of limitations. (See Ishmael v. Millington, supra, 241 Cal.App.2d at pp. 525-528; Lysick v. Walcom, supra, 258 Cal.App.2d at p. 150 [“Breach of duty is usually a fact issue for the jury, but it may be resolved as a matter of law if the circumstances do not permit a reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant’s conduct violates the degree of care exacted of him.”].) As I shall explain, a jury could reasonably conclude that Platt’s conduct toward Daniel violated the degree of care expected of her.
Because Flatt chose to resolve the conflict of interest between clients Daniel and Hinkle by withdrawing from her representation of Daniel,4 her conduct was governed by the State Bar Rules of Professional Conduct, rule 3-700(A)(2), which requires that “[a] member shall not withdraw from *297employment until the member has taken reasonable steps to avoid reasonably foreseeable prejudice to the rights of the client . . . Oddly, the majority does not discuss this rule.
Depending on the circumstances, a lawyer’s obligation to take “reasonable steps to avoid reasonably foreseeable prejudice” upon withdrawing from representation of a client can require the lawyer to advise the client of the running of the applicable statute of limitations on the client’s claim or of the need to promptly seek replacement counsel. (See Miller v. Metzinger (1979) 91 Cal.App.3d 31, 42 [154 Cal.Rptr. 22] [lawyer withdrawing from a representation was required under the circumstances to advise client that limitations period was running and that client should promptly seek replacement counsel].)
Whether, on the facts of this case, Attorney Flatt breached her duty of care to Daniel by failing to advise him upon withdrawing from representation that the limitations period was running or that he should promptly seek replacement counsel is an issue to be resolved by expert evidence regarding the standard of care. (See Flowers v. Torrance Memorial Hospital, supra, 8 Cal.4th at p. 1001; Lipscomb v. Krause, supra, 87 Cal.App.3d at pp. 975-976; Lysick v. Walcom, supra, 258 Cal.App.2d at p. 156.) This issue could be resolved on summary judgment only if, by offering uncontroverted expert evidence, Flatt established that the reasonably prudent lawyer, withdrawing from representation of Daniel under these circumstances, would not have advised Daniel of the running of the statute of limitations or of the need to promptly obtain other counsel.
Here, the record contains no such evidence. The only ground on which Flatt sought summary judgment was that Daniel was never her client and that therefore she never owed him any duty whatsoever. Flatt never argued she was entitled to summary judgment on the ground that even if Daniel was a client, she had no duty to advise him of the statute of limitations applicable to his claim, or of the immediate need to employ new counsel. The only evidence Flatt submitted in support of her summary judgment motion attempted to show that no attorney-client relationship ever arose between her and Daniel, a theory on which, the majority concedes, she was not entitled to summary judgment. (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 281.) Neither party submitted any evidence, expert or otherwise, as to the standard of care that a reasonably prudent lawyer would have used in withdrawing from the representation of a client because of a conflict of interest arising from concurrent but unrelated representations.
Because the record contains no evidence showing what the standard of care would have required Flatt to do upon discovering the conflict of interest *298and withdrawing from her representation of Daniel, Flatt has failed to establish, as a matter of law, that her duty of care to Daniel did not obligate her to advise him regarding the statute of limitations. Therefore, Flatt has not demonstrated that her actions satisfied the standard of care she owed to Daniel, and Flatt is not entitled to summary judgment on this ground. (See Hunsucker v. Sunnyvale Hilton Inn (1994) 23 Cal.App.4th 1498, 1501 [28 Cal.Rptr.2d 722]; Bro v. Glaser (1994) 22 Cal.App.4th 1398, 1405 [27 Cal.Rptr.2d 894].)
I recognize that unexpected conflicts of interest may arise in the midst of litigation, and that, through no fault of their own, attorneys may find themselves representing clients with adverse interests. Although our Rules of Professional Conduct admonish attorneys to avoid conflicts of interest, they provide little guidance in advising attorneys how to disentangle themselves once a conflict has arisen. These rules do require, however, that an attorney presented with a conflict of interest must take reasonable steps to ensure that any client who must seek new counsel because of the conflict is able to do so without injury. (See Rules Prof. Conduct, rule 3-700(A)(2).) Such steps are therefore necessary if an attorney is to act with the professional skill, prudence, and diligence required by our tort law.
V
In this case, the majority immunizes Attorney Flatt from liability by myopically focusing solely on Flatt’s duty to her client Hinkle, and concluding that her duty to Hinkle absolved her of any duty to her other client, Daniel. A lawyer, however, owes a duty of care to every client, and should not be permitted to escape liability for breaching the duty owed to one client by showing that the lawyer thereby advanced the interests of another client. Flatt’s duty to Hinkle did not, as a matter of law, negate the duty she owed Daniel. Nor, as discussed above, has Flatt shown that her duty to Daniel did not require her, under the facts of this case, to advise Daniel regarding the applicable statute of limitations. Because the record does not conclusively show either that Flatt owed no duty to Daniel, or that she did not breach the duty of care that she allegedly owed him, the trial court properly denied Flatt’s motion for summary judgment. I would therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal denying Platt’s petition for a writ of mandate.
Denying summary judgment to Flatt on these grounds would not mean that Daniel would necessarily prevail ultimately in his malpractice action against Flatt. Far from it. Daniel would still have to prove, for example, that an attorney-client relationship arose between him and Flatt as a result of their single meeting (see, e.g., Miller v. Metzinger, supra, 91 Cal.App.3d at *299pp. 39-40), that the standard of care applicable to Flatt would have required her to advise him upon her withdrawal as his counsel that the applicable statute of limitations was running and that he needed to obtain new counsel promptly (see id. at p. 42), that her failure to do so caused him to lose his underlying action against Hinkle (see, e.g., Thomas v. Lusk (1994) 27 Cal.App.4th 1709, 1716 [34 Cal.Rptr.2d 265]), and that he would have prevailed in his underlying action against Hinkle (see ibid.).
All of these are obstacles on which Daniel’s case against Flatt could properly founder. I cannot agree with the majority, however, that the reason Daniel should lose is that he belongs to a new species of client to whom lawyers owe no duty.
Mosk, J., and Werdegar, J., concurred.
The petition of real party in interest for a rehearing was denied March 2, 1995. Mosk, J., and Kennard, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

 It is a disputed issue whether or not Daniel was Platt’s client. As the majority notes, because we are reviewing the trial court’s denial of Platt’s motion for summary judgment, we may not resolve that disputed issue but must instead assume for purposes of our decision that Daniel was Platt’s client.

 Although I assume, for purposes of this opinion, that Platt’s firm continued to represent Hinkle, it is unclear whether Hinkle remained a client of Platt’s firm when Flatt began representing Daniel. The only evidence in the record as to the period of Platt’s law firm’s representation of Hinkle shows that its representation of Hinkle ended one month before Platt’s representation of Daniel began. If Hinkle was only a former client of Platt’s, then there was no conflict of interest between the two representations because their subject matter was not substantially related, and Flatt had no need to withdraw from her representation of Daniel.

 Throughout its opinion, the majority describes the duty that Attorney Flatt owed to Hinkle as a “duty of loyalty.” Left unexplained is the relationship between this duty of loyalty and the duty of care that forms the basis for evaluating an attorney’s conduct in a case of professional malpractice.

 Although the majority describes this as a case in which Flatt had “a mandatory and unwaivable duty not to represent [Daniel]” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 279; see also maj. opn., ante, at pp. 282, 285-286), such is not the case. Flatt might well have been able to resolve the conflict of interest by withdrawing from her representation of Hinkle, rather than Daniel, so long as the conflict of interest arose inadvertently. (See Truck Ins. Exchange v. Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co. (1992) 6 Cal.App.4th 1050, 1059-1060 [8 Cal.Rptr.2d 228].) Moreover, there was another option available to Flatt: our Rules of Professional Conduct permit a lawyer to “[represent a client in a matter and at the same time in a separate matter accept as a client a person or entity whose interest in the first matter is adverse to the client in the first matter” if both clients give their informed written consent to the dual representation. (Rules Prof. Conduct, rule 3-310(C)(3).) The record does not show why Flatt did not pursue either of these options.