Amjadi v. Brown, No. G059069 (D4d3 Aug. 30, 2021)
Sometimes clients won’t settle when their lawyers think they should. No matter how much you explain to them that it’s a good deal, that it’s better than anything they could expect even if they win at trial, or that they are letting emotional issues get in the way of what litigation is really about: money, they just won’t come around to your view of the situation. But if you didn’t want to deal with that, you should have told the interviewers at OCI that you want to be a capital markets lawyer. Because, as fools who decided to pursue a life in litigation, clients who don’t take our settlement advice are an occupational hazard we just need to suck up and deal with.
Lots of strategic and tactical decisions in litigation belong to the attorney, not the client. But not settlement. Rule 1.2 of the Rules of Professional Conduct unequivocally states that a “lawyer shall abide by a client’s decision whether to settle a matter.”
The plaintiff lawyers here (working on a contingency, no less) thought they could end around that rule by putting in their retainer agreement that the client delegated them the authority to decide if and when to settle, so long as the lawyers thought it was in the client’s interests. Bad idea.
Not only is that prohibited by the RPCs, cases have found that frustrating a client’s authority on when and under what terms to settle can constitute “moral turpitude.” So this all results in the Court of Appeal invalidating a settlement entered over the client’s objection, the Court declaring the retainer agreement void, and the lawyers being reported to the state bar, not just for the retainer agreement, but also for disclosing a bunch of client confidences in the course of the dispute over the settlement.
Reversed.
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