## Facts

- Residents filed a toxic-tort action alleging Aerojet’s manufacturing and waste-disposal activities contaminated groundwater and that Aerojet concealed contamination.
- Years earlier, Aerojet retained the law firm Holliman, Hackard & Taylor for land-use and environmental compliance advice relating to hazardous-waste facilities, groundwater treatment, disposal practices, and landfill closure involving groundwater sampling.
- Michael Hackard was a partner at Holliman, Hackard & Taylor during the prior representation but did not work on Aerojet matters and asserted he received no Aerojet confidential information.
- After leaving the firm and forming a new firm, Hackard represented the resident plaintiffs against Aerojet.
- Aerojet moved to disqualify Hackard and his new firm, arguing Holliman, Hackard & Taylor obtained confidential information about contamination and Aerojet’s litigation and public-relations strategies.
- The trial court found the prior firm’s work substantially related to the toxic-tort litigation and disqualified Hackard and his new firm based on a presumption that firm confidences were imputed to him as a former partner.

## Issues

1. In a successive-representation conflict, does a lawyer become automatically disqualified from suing a former client of the lawyer’s prior firm when the prior firm’s representation is substantially related to the new case, even if the lawyer did not work on the prior matter?
2. Must the court conduct a fact-specific inquiry into whether confidential information material to the current case was actually (or would normally have been) imparted to the lawyer at the former firm?

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal reversed the disqualification order and remanded.
- A lawyer in Hackard’s position is not automatically disqualified solely because the lawyer’s former firm represented the opposing party in a substantially related matter.
- The trial court erred by applying a conclusive presumption that Hackard possessed Aerojet’s confidential information based only on his status as a former partner, without examining his actual involvement or exposure.

## Legal Principles

- When a lawyer did not participate in the former firm’s representation of the adverse party, substantial relationship between the matters does not alone require disqualification of the lawyer or the lawyer’s new firm.
- Disqualification turns on a fact-based examination of the nature and extent of the lawyer’s involvement with and exposure to the former firm’s work, including whether confidential information material to the current matter would normally have been imparted to the lawyer.
- In this setting, imputed knowledge from the former firm to the lawyer is not treated as an irrebuttable presumption; the court must evaluate the practical likelihood of exposure to confidences.

## Conclusion

The court held that disqualification of a lawyer who did not work on a former firm’s substantially related representation requires a factual determination of actual or expected exposure to material confidential information; disqualification cannot rest on a conclusive presumption of imputed knowledge.


Adams v. Aerojet-General Corp., 86 Cal. App. 4th 1324, 104 Cal. Rptr. 2d 116 (Cal. Ct. App. 2001)