In a significant legal development, Pacific Biosciences of California Inc. successfully avoided a total in-house law disqualification, thanks to a ruling by Judge Edward Davila of the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The company was embroiled in a legal conflict that had triggered the motion to disqualify its entire legal department.
Perkins Coie LLP won a motion disqualifying some of the law department of Pacific Biosciences, rather than the whole team. This came after Pacific Biosciences hired a former intellectual property attorney who had work on an infringement suit, filed against the company, for Perkins.
The clients of Perkins Coie involved in the conflict, Take2 Technologies Ltd. and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, sought to sideline the entire law department of Pacific Biosciences under the California rules governing lawyer conflicts. However, Judge Davila granted this motion only in part. He resolved to limit the disqualification to the implicated attorney, Yang Tang, thereby refraining from imposing a ban on the entire in-house department – a decision that he deemed as ‘too strong a medicine’.
The decision triggers important reflections on the boundaries between conflict of interests and the scope of disqualification within corporate law departments. It is a crucial reminder of the delicacy and importance of ethical considerations in the legal profession, especially when perceived conflicts can potentially lead to disqualifications that may significantly hamper the working of a corporation’s legal department.