“6th Circuit grants law firm qualified immunity in firing” —

• “A law firm was entitled to dismissal of an employment retaliation suit on qualified immunity grounds because no clearly established law put it on notice that firing one of its attorneys under the circumstances would violate the First Amendment, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has decided.”
• “A Nashville city councilman allegedly threatened to withdraw business from the law firm due to the position one of its attorneys took as the chair of the county election commission on a tax referendum. When the attorney declined the law firm’s request that he oppose the referendum, the firm fired him.”
• “The plaintiff sued the council member and the firm for retaliating against his federal free-speech rights.”
• “A U.S. District Court rejected the assertion of qualified immunity by the defendants.”
• “But the 6th Circuit reversed, ruling that the firm could invoke qualified immunity because of the government work it performed, and that it was entitled to dismissal because no clearly established law prohibited its conduct.”
• “‘We know of no case in which the First Amendment prohibited a law firm from firing one of its lawyers when the business interests of the firm, including demands from one of its clients, triggered the firing,’ the court wrote. “

David Kluft asks: “Should I be disqualified if the opposing party once told me his litigation goals?” —

• “A CT husband already had a lawyer for his divorce but frequently sought ‘second opinions,’ consulting with between 30-50 lawyers over the course of four years.
• “In 2022, he consulted with one of these ‘second opinion’ attorneys and met with her for 60-90 minutes, during which meeting he got emotional and discussed his goals for the divorce litigation. The attorney then reviewed the public court file, but it didn’t go further because she was too busy with other cases.”
• “Three years later, this same attorney appeared in the case for the wife. The court denied the husband’s motion to disqualify pursuant to Rule 1.18 (prospective client conflicts).”
• “The communication about goals did not require disqualification because there was no further meeting and because the husband failed to identify how that information would be significantly harmful to him (‘significant harm’ is a requirement of Rule 1.18).”