Nickel

Plaintiffs appeal from a pretrial order disqualifying their counsel for conflict of interest. Some 27 to 30 years before the motion for disqualification was made, one of plaintiffs’ attorneys represented an individual who now appears as a defendant in the present action. In both the old and new matters the litigation concerned water rights along the Kern River in the central valley. An issue before the trial court on the motion to disqualify was whether the matters were “substantially related,” a legal point of significance in attorney disqualification. The trial court found the matters to have the substantial relationship necessary for the disqualification of the attorneys.

This litigation is a complex one with many parties; numerous attorneys have been involved to this point. At the time of the filing of the notice of motion to disqualify, plaintiffs’ attorneys had already engaged in over 3,000 hours of litigation effort, costing their clients $387,000. Of particular significance to this appeal, the motion to disqualify was not made until 47 months after the moving party’s answer was filed.

Although the trial court heard argument on whether the moving party…