Hills

BACKGROUND

The Accident On September 8, 2006, Hills was loading and unloading merchandise at the Mervyn’s distribution center in Fremont, working there as an employee of Benchmark Staffing, an agency that supplied temporary workers. A truck pulled away from the dock, injuring Hills. Hills received worker’s compensation from Benchmark, and, in fact, the worker’s compensation insurer would later intervene in Hills’s lawsuit. In August 2007, Hills retained the Dunnion Law Firm (Dunnion firm or Hills’s attorneys) to represent him. According to the declaration of Glenda de Guzman of that firm, they were retained “expressly to pursue [Hills’s] claim against Mervyn’s, who he believed was the only party responsible for his injury.” The Proceedings Below On August 1, 2008, a year after its retention and almost two years after the accident, the Dunnion firm filed a complaint against Mervyn’s and Does 1 to 20.1 It developed that Mervyn’s had filed for bankruptcy days before the complaint was filed, and the case against Mervyn’s was automatically stayed. By November 3, 2008, the Dunnion firm had obtained the notice of bankruptcy. On December 1, 2008, the Dunnion firm filed its first case…