Court Opinion

ID: 9862745
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 02:04:38.930028+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:31:41.149306
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting.
The Court’s decision reminds one of a familiar German expression: “die pferde hinder den wagen spannen” — to put the cart before the horse. The majority has decided that the matter before us requires further review, and that a special committee should assist us in determining such questions as whether “approval of the designation ‘A, B & C’ [Weiss, Healey & Rea] * * * [will] dilute public perceptions of the established usage of such names.” Ante at 255-56. It seems to me that if the answer to that question and other suggested inquiries establish that no one has been or will be damaged, confused, misled, or in any wise adversely affected by petitioners’ use of the name under which they have been practicing, then there is no good reason for the rule that underlies the challenged opinion of the Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics. In that case we should not affirm Opinion 593, and we should scrap so much of the rule as would undo an arrangement under which this firm has operated, and, significantly, under which dozens (if not scores) of other firms have similarly operated for *257years, even decades, during which time I recall not one word of complaint.
As amicus, American Insurance Association, reminds us:
There is a real world out there; a world this Court recognizes and every day continues to face. It is a world burgeoning with newly admitted lawyers of every age and of every experience. They face problems of increasing legal complexity and increasing ethical magnitude. They all do not, because they unfortunately cannot, aspire to that glamorous state of achievement of receiving the “invitation to partnership.” Amicus Association recalls those days with fondness as well, when tort law was uncomplicated and the populace less litigious. But those times have changed and the practice of law is adapting itself to the various demands that are being made on it as a profession. One of those demands has been met by the use of house counsel by insurance carriers to defend law suits against its assureds ancillary to its use of retained counsel. Legally and ethically, this has been approved in all jurisdictions where it has been questioned* * *.
The ethics question posed in the opinion at issue involves simply the designation used by those staff attorneys as they act in concert. None of the briefs filed herein raises even a breath of suspicion of unethical conduct or practice involving the current manner of designation that has been in use in this jurisdiction since the memory of man runneth not.
For the moment I would hold on to the cart and put the horse ahead. Wherefore I dissent.