Court Opinion

ID: 9637606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:12:20.281967+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:56:14.038928
License: Public Domain

Mountain, J.
(concurring). This case presents an interesting and difficult question which has never been precisely answered. Clearly a lawyer owes a duty of loyalty to his client and equally clearly he owes a duty of loyalty to the court. How, when these duties come into conflict, shall the resulting dilemma be resolved ? How shall the obligations be reconciled ?
The problem originates in our adversary system of administering justice. To this system we are committed by centuries of tradition and usage. As Justice Jackson once said, “A common law trial is and always should be an adversary proceeding.” Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U. S. 495, 516, 67 S. Ct. 385, 396, 91 L. Ed. 451, 465 (1947). “If there is any message that I can leave with a younger trial lawyer, this is the one I yearn most to impart: the trial of a lawsuit is an adversary business.”1
The success or failure of an adversary system of meting out justice depends in very large part upon the devotion, dedication, tenacity and competence of the lawyers involved. In some substantial degree the effectiveness of the representation an attorney affords his client will depend upon the quality of the relationship that exists between them. And only if that relationship is one of utter trust and confidence *409on the part of the client will he communicate with his attorney in a completely candid and uninhibited manner. Of perhaps paramount importance in inducing this kind of relationship and trust is a conviction on the part of the client that his communications to his attorney will not be revealed to others. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this factor.
Of course it goes without saying that a client’s communications to his lawyer are to be treated as confidential unless the client agrees otherwise. There are exceptions to this rule, born of sound policy, yet they are few and thus far carefully circumscribed. If a client reveals to his lawyer that he, the client, is about to commit a crime, the privilege of confidentiality certainly does not pertain. This is the clearest, and some will say the only, exception to the rule.
Suppose, however, he [your client] tells you that he is going to burn down the courthouse or that he is going to commit another murder that afternoon. Now what is your duty? It is obvious. Your duty to the community rises above your duty to your client. [Roberts, Owen J., The Lawyer’s Duties to his Clients, 7 Vniv. of Fla. L. Rev. 413, 418 (1954)]
I think there may be other occasions when the privilege gives way. A client should not, for instance, be allowed, with his attorney’s knowledge, to perpetrate a blatant fraud upon the court. "What occurred in this case, let me quickly add, was in no way a fraud. The appellants’ clients deliberately violated a court order, but no fraud was committed.
I have suggested that the issue posed by the clash of these conflicting loyalties has never been definitively resolved. The point of view that would, in such a situation, generally tip the scales in favor of the client is persuasively expounded by Charles P. Curtis in his book, “It’s Your Law,” supra, 1-412 and in his article, The Ethics of Ad*410vocacy, 4 Stan. L. Rev. 3 (1951). The opposing view is ably stated by Henry S. Drinker in Some Remarles on Mr. Curtis’ "The Ethics of Advocacy,” 4 Stan. L. Rev. 349 (1952). An examination of these materials will clearly indicate the difficulty of the problem.
In this ease the majority have agreed to set aside the judgment of conviction of contempt that was entered below, a decision with which I am in complete accord. They have, however, reached the conclusion that appellants used bad judgment in not notifying the court sooner than they did that an order of the court was being impugned, and that this failure on the part of appellants was a violation of their duty of loyalty to the court. I would, myself, go further along the road of exculpation. As Mr. Curtis has observed,
The lawyer’s official duty, required of liim indeed by the court, is to devote'himself to the client. He has two masters, and it is sometimes hard to say which comes first. There are occasions when our system of justice seems to give the nod to the client. [It’s Your Law, supra, at 6]
In my opinion this is such a case. I cannot bring myself to criticize what appellants did and I doubt that I could withhold criticism had they acted otherwise.
Since the argument of this case the Supreme Court has decided Maness v. Meyers,- U. S.-, 95 S. Ct. 584, 42 L. Ed. 574 (1975). There an attorney at law of the State of Texas had been held in contempt of court for advising his client that the latter might properly, in his own interest, refuse to obey a court order. The order required the client to bring to court and submit to inspection certain documents, the revelation of which might well have resulted in criminal proceedings being brought against him. Pursuant to his attorney’s advice, and, as he said, for no other reason, the client refused to comply with the order of the court. The attorney rested his advice upon the proposition that compliance with the order might have the feared result and that hence his client’s right under the Fifth Amend*411ment to refrain from incriminating himself constituted adequate justification to disobey the order. The attorney was held in contempt of court and was accorded no relief while exhausting his state court remedies. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed and set aside the conviction. It concluded that the course followed by the attorney had been entirely proper.
I do not suggest that this decision is controlling here. It is not. Essentially it is another manifestation of the zeal with which the Supreme Court intends to support the Fifth Amendment. The opinions of. the Court, however, do impart to the reader a deep-seated eonv-iction that where the loyalties we are considering come in conflict there are indeed “occasions when our system of justice seems to give the nod to the client.”
I concur in the conclusion of the Court that the conviction of contempt be set aside. I further state that in my opinion the conduct of appellants was in 'no respect improper.
Justices Pashman and Cliffoed join in this concurring opinion.
Mountain, Pashman and Clifford, JJ., concur in the result.
For reversal — Chief Justice Hughes and Justices Jacobs, Hall, Mountain, Sullivan, Pashman and Clifford — 7.
For affirmance — None.

Lon Hocker, Esq., of the St. Louis Bar, during a panel discussion on “Trial Tactics,” American Bar Association (Chicago, 1951), quoted in Curtis, It’s Tour Law (1954) 2.

Keprinted with only minor change in Voices in Court, (Davenport ed. 1958), 2-25.