Court Opinion

ID: 9452048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:29:08.45358+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:02.103308
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Chief Judge, with whom J. JOSEPH SMITH, Circuit Judge, concurs
(dissenting).
I adhere to the views previously expressed, and would reverse the judgment for the plaintiff.
Spanos admittedly was practicing law in New York during the five years he prepared the industry suit for Skouras, under a direct arrangement with Skouras and in collaboration with the other attorneys also retained by Skouras.
D
Spanos was not admitted to practice law in New York by the New York courts. Therefore he may recover only if he was admitted to the federal court of the district where the litigation was in progress or if he obtained leave to practice in the particular case. He did neither.
*172For reasons which are set forth in the majority opinion for the panel, the federal court sitting in New York ought to honor the strong public policy of New York and the failure to comply with the rules of the Southern District, by refusing to permit recovery of any additional fees not already paid.
Judge Friendly’s opinion now supports recovery on the theory that no state can prohibit a citizen with a federal claim from engaging an out-of-state lawyer to collaborate with an in-state lawyer because of the privileges and immunities clause of the Constitution. No necessity is shown for this unprecedented application of privileges and immunities; to apply it here tortures a concept which has nothing to do with the issues before us. New York has not prohibited Skouras from retaining Spanos. Indeed, no one has interfered with Skouras retaining Spanos. Obviously Skouras is not complaining here.
The fact that Spanos is an out-of-state lawyer was not the reason he was not admitted here. The reason was that he did not make application in accordance with the Southern District Rules. All he had to do was make his application which would probably have been granted. But we ought not to attempt to correct this omission years later by any nunc pro tunc blessing. The power of the district courts to require applications for admission and to regulate admissions is not unimportant. The opinion of the majority would seem to reduce to zero the power of any court in New York, state or federal, to exercise any control over who practices law in New York where the legal advice sought concerns a “federal claim or defense,” a test which is broad enough to include almost anything in these days of ever-burgeoning federal jurisdiction. Surely it cannot be seriously questioned that courts ought to have the power to regulate who practices before them for their own protection and that of litigants. There is an orderly and well-defined way in which the courts handle these matters; Spanos here chose not to follow it.
If the bar is disturbed because the fee for advice on federal matters given away from a lawyer’s home state may not be collectible, then the bar should urge the judges of the Southern District to change the present rule to permit general admission to all out-of-state attorneys. (Of course even this would not help those who, like Spanos, neglect to avail themselves of local rules of practice.) As presently written the rule permits such general admission only to New York, Connecticut and Vermont lawyers. See footnote 6 of my first opinion which points out that at least twenty federal district courts permit general admission to out-of-state lawyers. The Western and Northern Districts of New York have already provided for such general admission for out-of-state lawyers. Where there is any need for a more liberal admission policy there is no reason to doubt that the judges of any district court will give proper consideration to adopting appropriate provisions in the rules of their court.
Apparently the majority would leave the more than 2000,000 out-of-state lawyers from the forty nine other states free to practice federal law in New York without any regulation whatever — none from New York, and none from any federal court, until it was time to appear at trial. This decision would seem to mean that an attorney admitted to practice in any state has an unrestricted license to practice federal law and give advice on federal law in all other forty nine states. I doubt whether many states make much, if any inquiry, as to what, if anything, applicants to their bar may know about federal law. Thus out-of-state lawyers advising in whole or in part on federal law would seem well advised not to apply for state admission or for federal court admission and thus avoid all possibility of supervision or check.