Park Apartments at Fayetteville, LP v. Plants

Shilah Plants (plaintiff) sued The Park Apartments at Fayetteville, LP, The Park Apartments at Fayetteville Management Company, LLC, and Lindsey Management Company, Inc. (collectively, Park) (collectively, defendants), alleging that her lease’s liquidated-damages clause was unenforceable. Legal Aid of Arkansas represented Plants. Lindsey Management’s in-house counsel department represented Park. While Plants’s suit was pending, Summer McCoy worked as a Legal Aid attorney for approximately five months. McCoy then quit working for Legal Aid and accepted a position in Lindsey Management’s in-house-counsel department. Plants moved to disqualify Lindsey Management’s entire in-house department. Plants alleged that McCoy had access to Plants’s confidential information while working at Legal Aid and therefore had a conflict of interest. Accordingly, Plants argued that McCoy should be disqualified pursuant to Rule 1.9(b) of the Arkansas Rules of Professional Conduct. That rule provided that an attorney who changes firms is barred from knowingly representing a person in the same or a substantially related matter in which the attorney’s prior firm represented the opposing party if the attorney acquired protected information that is material to the matter. Plants further argued that McCoy’s conflict should be imputed to Lindsey Management’s entire in-house-counsel department. Evidence adduced before the trial court established that Legal Aid divided its attorneys into separate divisions. McCoy was assigned to the economic-justice division. The housing division handled Plants’s case. McCoy testified that she never worked on Plants’s case, never accessed Plants’s files, and had no actual knowledge about the case. McCoy further testified that she had never participated in any calls with the housing division generally. The trial court found that McCoy had access to Plants’s files while working at Legal Aid and therefore had a conflict. The trial judge imputed that conflict to Lindsey Management’s in-house-counsel department and granted Plants’s disqualification motion. Park appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court.