## Facts

- Walter L. Stitz sued his former employer, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, alleging age discrimination.
- Bethlehem moved pretrial to disqualify Stitz’s counsel, George B. Levasseur, and his firm, based on Levasseur’s prior employment at Bethlehem.
- Levasseur worked for Bethlehem from November 1974 to June 1985, first as a corporate labor attorney and later as a labor relations representative after departmental restructuring.
- During his employment, Levasseur handled workers’ compensation matters and participated in collective bargaining, union campaigns, and force reductions, and spent his last 18 months at Bethlehem’s Sparrows Point plant.
- After leaving Bethlehem, Levasseur entered private practice and filed Stitz’s age-discrimination suit on July 8, 1986, associating co-counsel.
- Bethlehem asserted that Levasseur was expected to remain knowledgeable about personnel policies and that managers sought his confidential advice on personnel matters.
- Bethlehem conceded Levasseur had no direct involvement in Stitz’s termination.
- Levasseur averred he did not work on, and lacked access to confidential policies concerning, salaried exempt employees; Stitz was a salaried exempt employee.

## Issues

1. Whether Levasseur’s prior work for Bethlehem was substantially related to Stitz’s age-discrimination suit such that confidences should be presumed and disqualification required under Canon 4.
2. Whether an appearance of impropriety, without a showing of a concrete ethical risk, required disqualification under Canon 9.

## Decision

- The court denied Bethlehem’s motion to disqualify Levasseur and his firm.
- Bethlehem failed to show a substantial relationship between Levasseur’s prior responsibilities and the present age-discrimination matter.
- Generalized assertions that Levasseur knew Bethlehem’s personnel policies did not justify presuming relevant confidences.
- Canon 9 did not mandate disqualification absent a showing of a real risk of misuse of confidences or other concrete ethical problem.
- The court treated disqualification as a drastic remedy and weighed the plaintiff’s interest in chosen counsel and broader policy concerns against speculative conflict claims.

## Legal Principles

- Disqualification of former-client counsel generally requires a showing that the prior representation (or work) is substantially related to the current matter such that relevant confidences are reasonably likely to have been obtained.
- Broad claims of general corporate knowledge, without identification of specific overlapping matters or confidential information tied to the litigation, are insufficient for disqualification.
- The appearance-of-impropriety concept does not, standing alone, justify disqualification when no concrete risk of ethical harm is shown.
- Courts should apply disqualification standards cautiously because the remedy can impair a party’s choice of counsel and can function as an undue restraint on former in-house attorneys’ practice.

## Conclusion

The court refused to disqualify a former in-house labor attorney from representing an employee against the attorney’s former corporate employer where the employer showed no meaningful connection between the attorney’s prior work and the employee’s termination and offered only generalized claims about exposure to personnel policies.


Stitz v. Bethlehem Steel Corp., 650 F. Supp. 914 (D. Md. 1987)