When a law firm hires attorneys who once represented the opposing party in an ongoing lawsuit, will an “ethics screen” cure the conflict?
That’s the assertion the Philadelphia law firm, Cozen O’Connor, appears to be making in response to a challenge by Henry McNeil, a Philadephia art collector and heir to the Tylenol fortune. McNeil is involved in a fee dispute with a Cozen O’Connor client, E.B. Mahoney Brothers, a Bryn Mawr, PA contractor, over a multi-million dollar construction project in Chestnut Hill, a neighborhood in Northwest Philadelphia.
When Mahoney sought final payment through arbitration, McNeal counterclaimed, alleging that the project had not been completed, leaving him “with a shoddily-built structure.” Under the construction agreement, all disputes must be resolved through arbitration.
Initially, McNeil hired Bruce Ficken, then chairman of Pepper Hamilton’s Construction Practice Group, to represent him in the arbitration. According to the second complaint, however, in March 2017, Ficken stopped communicating with McNeil and McNeil later learned that Ficken and one other attorney who worked on his case, Jeffrey Mullen, had debunked to Cozen O’Connor. According to the complaint, “At a critical point in the arbitration process, McNeil suddenly found himself with no legal representation, and no information about his case, while his former lawyers were now working at the opposing party’s law firm,”