I prepared an application to restrain a firm of solicitors from acting in a Corporations List matter in the Supreme Court recently, and so have been reading the latest cases about conflict injunctions. The very latest is TJ Board & Sons Pty Ltd v Castello [2008] VSC 91, where the plaintiff applied unsuccessfully to [...]
Entries Tagged as 'current client and past client'
Both sides apply to restrain the other's lawyers from acting
April 8th, 2008 · No Comments
Tags: Ethics · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty · duty and interest
The US take on past client / current client duty conflicts based on the 'getting to know you factors'
June 28th, 2007 · No Comments
America's Legal Profession Blog had posted yesterday on a conflicts case about what we in Australia would call "the getting to know you factors". The case was Hurley v Hurley, decided on 22 May 2007 by a 5 judge bench of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. The background is that a lawyer may be [...]
Tags: Ethics · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty
Updates: big words, Texan legal writing, conflicts of duties
May 27th, 2007 · No Comments
In my post "Judge uses big word", I commented on President Mason's use of "tergiversation". Now David Starkoff at Inchoate has noted another's analysis of the odds of each of the High Court judges other than Justice Kirby being responsible for the appearance of "epexegetical" (which seems to mean "explanatory in a way [...]
Tags: Ethics · Fiduciary duties · Judges · Legal writing · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty · duty and interest · interest of associate
Chinese wall crumbles in big litigation and Optus loses its lawyers 2 years in
April 22nd, 2007 · 2 Comments
Asia Pacific Telecommunications Ltd v Optus Networks Pty Ltd [2007] NSWSC 350 is a decision with wonderfully appalling facts. In the rush to agree consent orders before a directions hearing one morning, a megafirm sent a document to the other side which handed proof on a platter of a flagrant breach of a Chinese [...]
Tags: Ethics · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty
No absolute bar in England to representing and opposing same client in two different matters
March 18th, 2007 · No Comments
Goubran shares my view that a solicitor can act for and against the one man at the same time. Just not in relation to the same thing. In fact, there is a degree of relation which makes it impermissible, and Goubran sets out the practically meaningless judicial utterances on the test for the requisite degree [...]
Tags: Ethics · Fiduciary duties · Uncategorized · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty
Role of professional conduct rules in conflict of duties injunctions
March 18th, 2007 · No Comments
On the relationship of the conduct rules to injunctions to restrain lawyers acting in the face of a conflict of duties, Goubran cites some useful authorities. I have always been astonished by what I thought was the Australian courts' universal and complete disregard in these kinds of applications to the professional conduct rules' conflicts provisions. [...]
Tags: Ethics · Fiduciary duties · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty
Finally, some scholarship on Australian lawyers' conflicts of duties
March 17th, 2007 · 1 Comment
Finally, someone has gone a long way towards synthesising the law relating to injunctions to restrain lawyers from acting in the face of a conflict of duties. The Melbourne University Law Review article is "Conflicts of Duty: the Perennial Lawyers' Tale — A comparative Study of the Law in England and Australia", [2006] MULR 4. [...]
Tags: Ethics · Fiduciary duties · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty
Chief Legal Counsel at BHP-Billiton cans firms' conflicts awareness
February 9th, 2007 · No Comments
Lawyers Weekly's 2 February 2007 edition reported the following comments from John Fast, Chief Legal Counsel of BHP-Billiton:
'“The area where I think the biggest difficulties arise is in … conflicts, and that is an area where increasingly firms that do not have a very clear conflicts of interest policy are at a disadvantage, and will [...]
Tags: Ethics · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duty and duty
Law Institute Journal tallies the score on Spincode
November 10th, 2006 · No Comments
I have never understood what it is about Justice Brooking's extended obiter on the fiduciary duty of loyalty in Spincode Pty Ltd v Look Software Pty Ltd (2001) 4 VR 501 which prompted such apoplexy. I would have thought that the second most obvious conflict of duties (after acting concurrently for two opposing parties) would [...]
Tags: Ethics · Fiduciary duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duty and duty
Roisin Annesley's Victorian Barristers' practice guide
October 29th, 2006 · No Comments
The Bar has produced a practice guide. It is a great achievement and stands as a beacon for the Law Institute's future efforts at promulgating knowledge of the practice rules. The Bar actually has something called the Professional Standards Education Committee. Written by Roisin Annesley, it was launched by Victoria Marles, the Legal Services Commissioner [...]
Tags: "professional negligence" · Book reviews · Discipline · Ethics · Legal Profession Act · Negligence · No win no fee · Professional fees and disbursements · Retainers · concurrent duties · conflicts · costs disclosure defaults · costs disputes · current client and past client · duties of confidentiality · duties regarding witnesses · duty and duty · duty and interest · duty to court · interest of associate · litigation ethics · procedure · setting aside costs agreements

