Pole

Two partners withdrew from a law partnership and took the firm’s largest client with them. The remaining partners decided to immediately dissolve the firm and the former partners sued the two departing partners and their new firm for declaratory relief, accounting, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, and other causes of action in two separate actions seeking, among other things, their share of the profits earned from the completion of the partnership’s unfinished business representing a defendant in numerous product liability cases. The trial court in the first action (1) found that the plaintiffs had a fiduciary duty to complete some of the unfinished business but had failed to do so and therefore had failed to “do equity,” (2) barred the plaintiffs from recovering in the accounting any of the profits earned by the defendants, and (3) referred the accounting cause of action to the court hearing the second action, which primarily had asserted tort claims against the departing partners. The trial court in the second action then consolidated the two actions and determined that the prior ruling in the first action completely precluded the recovery of tort and…