Court: Lindsey lawyers improperly disqualified

FAYETTEVILLE — The Arkansas Supreme Court reversed and remanded Thursday a Washington County Circuit judge’s ruling disqualifying Lindsey Management Co.’s legal team from representing the company in a lawsuit.

Circuit Judge John Threet ruled last year none of Lindsey’s lawyers could represent the company in a lawsuit filed by a former tenant, Shilah Plants, because one of them had previously worked for Legal Aid of Arkansas.

Plants is being represented in the lawsuit over her lease at The Park Apartments by attorneys from Legal Aid of Arkansas.

Plants argued Lindsey attorney Summer McCoy had access to Plants’ confidential attorney/client information at Legal Aid while she worked there in 2016 and, therefore, the entire Lindsey legal staff should be disqualified for having a conflict of interest.

Threet agreed and Lindsey appealed, arguing access to attorney/client information alone isn’t sufficient for attorney disqualification.

Supreme Court justices said Thursday while McCoy could conceivably have accessed Plants’ files while at Legal Aid, there was no evidence McCoy had contact with Plants when she was a Legal Aid client.

There was also no evidence McCoy had gained any actual knowledge of Plants’ information because Plants had been represented by lawyers in a different division of Legal Aid than the division in which McCoy worked, justices said.

“She ( McCoy) testified that she had no actual knowledge of Plants’s confidential information, never accessed Plants’ file, and never participated in Plants’s case,” according to the majority opinion. “Indeed, McCoy testified that she did not participate in any telephone conferences related to the housing work group. McCoy rebutted the presumption that she had confidential knowledge, and Plants offered no evidence to contradict McCoy’s testimony.”

Justice Karen Baker offered a dissenting opinion, arguing the majority ignored the appearance-of-impropriety standard and the Lindsey team should have been disqualified.