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(Reuters) - The law firm Foley & Lardner will be allowed to continue defending itself against a malpractice claim filed in a probate dispute between two brothers fighting over assets, a Washington, D.C., judge ruled on Wednesday.
Judge Erik Christian of District of Columbia Superior Court turned down a bid from the plaintiff to disqualify Foley over the estate-planning work that is central to the lawsuit filed by Thomas Day last year against his brother Frank Day and the law firm.
Christian denied the bid without prejudice, and he also denied efforts from the defendants to dismiss the case. The judge announced his rulings from the bench.
Thomas Day's lawyer, Steve Larson-Jackson, declined to comment on Thursday, and lawyers for Foley and Frank Day did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
The Day brothers' parents hired Foley in 2014 to draft revocable trusts and wills, and Thomas Day asserted in his lawsuit, docketed in December 2020, that "sloppy and ambiguous" drafting has led to an uneven and unintended distribution of more than $1 million in assets, including a cottage in Massachusetts.
Larson-Jackson urged Christian to disqualify Foley from appearing as defense counsel for the firm.
"What we're also trying to do is to avoid problems that we anticipate will occur in the future," Larson-Jackson said at Wednesday's hearing. "Someone from Foley & Lardner will have to be a witness in the case. If we have Foley & Lardner as counsel, it's just going to make matters unnecessarily complicated."
Foley partner Joseph Edmondson Jr, representing the firm in the litigation, described the plaintiff's effort to oust the firm as meddling in an attorney-client relationship "for tactical reasons in a litigation."
Edmondson said the firm's ability to advocate for itself was "open and closed" by earlier precedent in the D.C. Court of Appeals, the highest local court in the nation's capital. The "entire system is set up so that law firms should be able to represent themselves," he added.
In seeking dismissal of the malpractice claim, Edmondson argued that the lawsuit represented an attempt by the plaintiff to "rewrite his deceased parent's unambiguous trust documents." Foley's lawyers have questioned the timeliness of the complaint, raising a statute of limitation argument.
Larson-Jackson said in a court filing on June 21 that "the validity of the trust is not at issue. What is at issue is how the lawyers arrived at a valid trust."
Christian, the judge, asked the lawyers to file scheduling papers in the coming days to address matters including summary judgment.
The case is Day v. Day, District of Columbia Superior Court, No. 2020 LIT 000018
For plaintiff: Steve Larson-Jackson of Law Firm of LarJack
For defendant: Christopher Hoge of Crowley, Hoge & Fein
For Foley & Lardner: Joseph Edmondson Jr. of Foley & Lardner
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