Court Opinion

ID: 9536639
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:04:07.948364+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:55.250841
License: Public Domain

FOX, J.
I dissent. The gravaman of plaintiff’s ease was the performance of legal services by his assignor for which recovery of a reasonable attorney’s fee was sought. Defendants contested the right to any fees, asserting in their affirmative defense that the claimed services were performed at a time when plaintiff’s assignor had an interest in the transaction for which he was employed adverse to their own and also secretly *305represented the other parties thereto. If this was so, the right to recover attorney’s fees would be forfeited. (Anderson v. Eaton, 211 Cal. 113, 116 [293 P. 788].)
The majority opinion concedes there was evidence to support defendants’ theory of the case. Defendants proffered some ten instructions relating to the duty of an attorney to refrain from assuming a position in any transaction in which he is employed which places him either in conflict with his clients or divides his loyalties. The single instruction given is Number 23, which reads:
“An attorney at law is not prohibited from entering into any business transaction with a client, touching or not touching the subject matter professionally entrusted to him by his client. Such transactions are, however, subject to close scrutiny, and they must be shown to be fair in all respects.” This does not touch the essence of the case, which was embodied in defendants’ instruction Number 43, which the judge declined to give. The majority opinion concedes that defendants were “entitled to further instructions upon the subject” but maintains that the tendered requests “were all faulty for one reason or another and hence were properly denied.” I cannot agree.
Instruction Number 43 reads: “43. It is an attorney’s duty to protect' his client in every possible way, and it is a violation of that duty for him to assume a position adverse or antagonistic to his client without the latter’s free and intelligent consent given after full knowledge of all the facts and circumstances. By virtue of this rule, an attorney is precluded from assuming any relation which would prevent him from devoting his entire energies to his client’s interests. No[r] does it matter that the intention and motive of the attorney are honest.” The majority opinion states, in justifying the refusal, that “this instruction would require an attorney to devote his entire energies to the particular client’s interests to the exclusion of all others. He owes no such obligation under a general employment which does not specifically call for his entire time.” But this criticism of Number 43 is completely at variance with any proper construction or interpretation of the instruction. The majority opinion makes the mistake of interpreting the second sentence of the proposed instruction out of context and without regard to its plain meaning, thus distorting its import into a requirement that an attorney must devote all his energies “to the particular client’s interests to the exclusion of all others.” *306But that is clearly not the sense of the instruction. It does not purport to limit an attorney’s activities to one particular client’s affairs. The instruction unequivocally asserts (1) that it is a violation of an attorney’s duty for him to place himself in a relationship antagonistic to his client’s interests without the latter’s assent based upon full knowledge of the facts; (2) that this is so regardless of the honesty of the attorney’s motives; and (3) by virtue of this rule, an attorney is precluded from assuming a position which would interfere with his duty to devote his entire energies to his client’s interests. It defines the duty of an attorney to his client, and the circumstances and conditions under which he may represent interests that are antagonistic to or in conflict with those of his client. (Anderson v. Eaton, 211 Cal. 113, 116 [293 P. 788] ; Hammett v. McIntyre, 114 Cal. App.2d 148, 155 [249 P.2d 885].)
It is thus patent that not only is instruction Number 43 an accurate and impeccable statement of the law but an examination of Anderson v. Eaton, supra, discloses that the instruction is taken virtually verbatim from the language of the opinion. The Anderson ease affirms the basic principle that it is an attorney’s duty to protect his client’s interest in every possible way and that he violates that duty if he assumes a position adverse to his client without the latter’s free and intelligent consent given after full knowledge of the circumstances. While it is true that language from judicial opinions divorced from their context may not always be safely given as an instruction to the jury, and as an indiscriminate practice is not countenanced (see Duff v. Schaefer Ambulmce Service, Inc., 132 Cal.App.2d 655, 679 [283 P.2d 91]), nevertheless its use in an instruction is unobjectionable when it is lucidly formulated in a simple proposition of law which fully covers the issues and is applicable to the evidence. Such was the nature of instruction Number 43. It would be unfortunate to hold that a clearly worded special instruction could not be given simply because it derives from the language used by a reviewing court although it is otherwise unobjectionable and no other instruction on the subject is given.
The majority purports to distinguish the Anderson case by suggesting that there “the court was speaking of the attorney’s obligation with respect to the conduct of a single piece of litigation.” It continues: “The attorney’s services in the case at bar did not involve litigation ...” This is a distinction without a difference. The language of the *307Anderson case cannot be reduced to such narrow compass. The plaintiff is here suing for legal services, and during the entire period in which such services were rendered the attorney owed the obligations of a fiduciary committed to the exacting standards of utmost good faith toward his clients. (Kornbau v. Evans, 66 Cal.App.2d 677, 685 [152 P.2d 651]; Sanguinetti v. Rossen, 12 Cal.App. 623, 630 [107 P. 560].) The fiduciary concept applies regardless of whether litigation is the object or in contemplation when the attorney is engaged and suffuses all his professional relations with his clients. In view of the broad scope of the activities encompassed in the term ‘practice of law,’ to attenuate the attorney’s fiduciary duty or ethical standards and relax their application in a situation where litigation is not involved would be pro-motive of mischief in the attorney-client relationship. As pointed out in People v. Merchants Protective Corp., 189 Cal. 531, 535 [209 P. 363] : “ ‘But in a larger sense it [the practice of law] includes legal advice and counsel and the preparation of legal documents and contracts by which legal rights are secured although such matter may or may not be depending in a court. ... It is common knowledge . . . that a large, if not the greater part of the work, of the bar today is out of court, or office work. Counsel and advice, the drawing of agreements, the organization of corporations and preparing papers connected therewith, the drafting of legal documents of all kinds . . . are activities which have been long classed as law practice . . .’ ” In all of these professional activities, no less than in his advocacy in court, unalloyed loyalty of counsel to his client must be ever present and prevail against the beckoning, of personal advantage.
Defendants were clearly “entitled to have this instruction, embodying their theory of the case with substantial support in the evidence, presented to the jury.” (Stout v. Southern Pac. Co., 127 Cal.App.2d 491, 503 [274 P.2d 194] ; Bickford v. Pacific Elec. Ry. Co., 120 Cal.App. 542, 548 [8 P.2d 186].) Not a single instruction was given to enlighten the jury on the subject of an attorney’s obligation to abstain from compromising his duty to his client by the avoidance of a situation which would bring his interests into conflict with theirs. Left without guidance or a criterion on this vital point, the jury might find the attorney had or represented interests that were adverse to his client and yet not perceive that his right to be paid for services rendered in the transaction could *308thereby be foreclosed. For these reasons, I am of the opinion that the effect of the erroneous refusal of this instruction was so prejudicial as to remove the case from the purview of section 4% of article VI of the California Constitution and compels a reversal of the judgment.
A petition for a rehearing was denied December 21, 1955, and appellants’ petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied January 25, 1956. McComb, J., did not participate therein.