Advisory Opinion:
943
Year Issued:
1985
RPC(s):
RPC 1.6; 1.7
Subject:
Conflict of interest; client confidence or secret; law firm retained by insurance company to represent its insured under reservation of rights where firm also represents insurance company
A law firm was appointed by B, an insurance company, to represent its insured, A, under a reservation of rights defense. In reviewing the inquiry regarding disclosures requested by your client A, concerning your previous or present representation of B, the Committee was of the general opinion that before you could undertake to represent A, you would have to disclose to A, any facts concerning your representation of B which might potentially cause a conflict of interest or otherwise adversely affect your representation of A. Without attempting to settle the legal questions involved, the Committee did note that some of the inquiries posed by A did not appear to involve confidential or secret information of your other client B.
However, many of the questions raised by A would involve apparent confidences or secrets, as those terms are used in the Rules of Professional Conduct. Therefore, before you could reveal those matters to A, you have to have the consent of B to release that information after full disclosure to B. Your ability to do that is apparently impeded by A's directive to you that the questions are "entirely confidential" and refusing to authorize you to release the questions to B. Therefore the Committee was of the opinion that you may make the general disclosure of your representation of B to A, but that you could not release specific information without B's consent. Therefore, you would need to advise A that you would be unable to seek the consent of B to release the information unless A authorized you to disclose the matters they have so far requested be kept confidential.
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