State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. KAW

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that an insurance company could \stand in the shoes\ of its insured for the purpose of seeking disqualification of the opposing party's attorney when there existed simultaneous representation of parties with conflicting interests
• noting that information the former client disclosed “to his attorneys during the course of the attorney-client relationship could be used to prove” the former client “was negligent”
• holding a party “seeking to disqualify opposing counsel based on a conflict of interest must demonstrate that (1) an attorney-client relationship existed, thereby giving rise to an irrefutable presumption that confidences were disclosed during the relationship, and (2
• recognizing the “irrefutable presumption that confidences were disclosed” in cases involving a direct conflict of interest with a former client and finding that actual proof of prejudice is not a prerequisite for disqualification of party counsel due to such a conflict
• stating “the presumption acknowledges the difficulty of proving that confidential information useful to the attorney's current client was given to the attorney”
• disqualifying a lawyer because he had previously represented a client in a lawsuit against a driver who injured the client and his family, then sought to represent the former client’s family in a later lawsuit against the client himself

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).