City and County of San Francisco v. Cobra Solutions, Inc.
Filed 6/5/06
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA
CITY AND COUNTY OF
SAN FRANCISCO et al., )
)
v. )
COBRA SOLUTIONS, INC., et al., )
Defendants and Respondents. ) Super. Ct. No. 417-218
__________________________________ )
A company seeking contracts for information technology services to a city retained a small private law firm. Two attorneys in the firm provided various services to the company, advising it about doing business with the city. Fifteen months later, one of those attorneys successfully won election as the city attorney. Before taking office, the new city attorney announced he would personally not participate in any case involving a client of his former law firm.
Fifteen months after the new city attorney was sworn in, his office named the company as a defendant in a complaint seeking damages for the city on allegations of fraud, statutory violations, and breach of contract. The company sought to disqualify the city attorney's entire office, arguing that as its former attorney he had obtained confidential information about it that precluded him, and the public office he now headed, from representing the city against it in a matter substantially related to the city attorney's former representation of the company. The trial court disqualified the city attorney and his office. The Court of Appeal upheld that ruling in a two-to-one decision. We affirm the Court of Appeal.
I. Background
The facts and dates recited here are drawn from declarations and exhibits submitted on the motion to disqualify and from a written contract between the City and County of San Francisco (hereafter City) and Cobra Solutions and TeleCon Ltd., two California corporations. Cobra Solutions is in the business of providing â€
