Gerber Prods. Co. v. Mitchell Williams Selig Gates & Woodyard, PLLC
| Decision Date | 11 March 2022 |
| Docket Number | No. 20-2912,20-2912 |
| Parties | GERBER PRODUCTS COMPANY, Plaintiff - Appellant v. MITCHELL WILLIAMS SELIG GATES & WOODYARD, PLLC; Byron Freeland, Defendants - Appellees |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Counsel who represented the appellant was Timothy Oliver Dudley of Little Rock, AR.
Counsel who represented the appellees were Robert Kenny McCulloch, of Little Rock, AR., and Robert L. Henry, III of Little Rock, AR.
Before COLLOTON, ERICKSON, and STRAS, Circuit Judges.
This case requires us to decide a novel legal-malpractice question under Arkansas law. What must a plaintiff show to recover the attorney fees it spent trying to fix previous counsel's mistakes? The answer, according to the district court, is that the result of the underlying proceeding would have been different. We disagree, so we reverse and remand for further proceedings.
The parties' dispute began in Arkansas state court, after Gerber Products Company hired Mitchell Williams Selig Gates & Woodyard, PLLC to defend a lawsuit. In the initial phases of discovery, Gerber produced 2,700 pages of documents. Not long after, Mitchell Williams received a notification from the other side that no lawyer wants to get: some of the documents were privileged. Fortunately for Gerber, Mitchell Williams was able to get those documents back. But to avoid future problems, the firm promised to use a privilege log.
Discovery continued, and so did Mitchell Williams's mistakes. After the state trial court granted an unopposed motion to compel, Gerber produced another 96,000 pages of documents. Still no privilege log. Then came several thousand more pages. This time, an eight-page privilege log accompanied them. Finally, after one last motion to compel, which once again went unanswered, Gerber turned over the last batch of documents, with a privilege log that had grown to 13 pages.
The privilege logs were too little, too late. Opposing counsel successfully argued that Gerber had already waived its attorney-client privilege by failing to invoke it in time, producing privileged documents, and creating an incomplete privilege log. After the trial court denied a protective order, Gerber fired Mitchell Williams and hired new counsel.
New counsel hoped to turn things around by filing an interlocutory appeal on Gerber's behalf. Although it argued that Gerber deserved a protective order, the Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed the decision to deny one. See Gerber Prods. Co. v. CECO Concrete Constr., LLC , 533 S.W.3d 139, 145 (Ark. Ct. App. 2017).
With a hefty legal bill, Gerber had little to show for it. Before trial was set to begin in the state-court case, Gerber sued Mitchell Williams and one of its attorneys, Byron Freeland, for malpractice in federal court. The remedy it sought was unusual: the more than $75,000 it had spent in "corrective attorney fees" in an attempt to fix the firm's mistakes.
The district court granted the firm's motion for summary judgment. Although it rejected the argument that the federal lawsuit was filed beyond the statute of limitations, the court concluded a different timing problem existed. Gerber filed its lawsuit against Mitchell Williams before the state-court case had gone to trial, so there was no way it could show that "the result in the underlying action would have been different." Evans v. Hamby , 378 S.W.3d 723, 727 (Ark. 2011). We must decide whether the district court's ruling accurately reflects Arkansas law.
We review the district court's decision de novo. See Anheluk v. Ohlsen , 459 F.3d 874, 877 (8th Cir. 2006). "Summary judgment [was] appropriate [if] the evidence, viewed in [the] light most favorable to the nonmoving party, shows no genuine issue of material fact exists and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Phillips v. Mathews , 547 F.3d 905, 909 (8th Cir. 2008) (citation omitted).
Attorney-malpractice claims date back to at least 1850 in Arkansas. See Pennington's Ex'rs v. Yell , 11 Ark. 212 (1850). Just like in any other negligence action, the plaintiff must establish proximate cause to prevail. See Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers § 53 cmt. a (Am. Law Inst. 2000) ("Legal-malpractice actions ... are subject to generally applicable principles of causation and damages."); see also Callahan v. Clark , 321 Ark. 376, 901 S.W.2d 842, 847 (1995) (discussing proximate cause). In Arkansas, "[p]roximate cause is defined as ‘that which in a natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produced the injury, and without which the result would not have occurred.’ " Madden v. Aldrich , 346 Ark. 405, 58 S.W.3d 342, 353–54 (2001) (emphasis omitted) (quoting City of Caddo Valley v. George , 340 Ark. 203, 9 S.W.3d 481, 487 (2000) ). What it requires, in other words, is an unbroken causal chain between an attorney's negligence and the injury. See City of Caddo Valley , 9 S.W.3d at 487.
Arkansas courts have repeatedly addressed a common scenario: a party loses and then blames its attorney. In one example, an attorney failed to plead a usury defense, which led to a sizable judgment on a debt. See Evans , 378 S.W.3d at 726–27. In another, when an attorney did not perfect an appeal, the client lost out on a larger child-support award. See Davis v. Bland , 367 Ark. 210, 238 S.W.3d 924, 925 (2006). "The injury" was losing, so the plaintiff had to connect the bad result in an "unbroken" chain to the attorney's negligence. City of Caddo Valley , 9 S.W.3d at 487 (citation omitted). Establishing proximate cause made the "merits of the underlying case" a "part of the proof of the malpractice case," creating a Evans , 378 S.W.3d at 727.
There is no case within a case here because Gerber's theory has nothing to do with how its state-court lawsuit will turn out. Instead, it wants to get back the more than $75,000 it spent trying to regain its attorney-client privilege after Mitchell Williams negligently waived it. See John Kohl & Co. v. Dearborn & Ewing , 977 S.W.2d 528, 534 (Tenn. 1998) (). In these unusual circumstances, is there still a way for Gerber to establish proximate cause? See Blankenship v. USA Truck, Inc. , 601 F.3d 852, 856 (8th Cir. 2010) ().
In our view, there is. Applying "generally applicable principles of causation and damages," Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers § 53 cmt. a (Am. Law Inst. 2000), Gerber will have to show that Mitchell William's negligence led, in a "natural and continuous sequence," to the extra fees it paid, Madden , 58 S.W.3d at 353 (citation omitted). See Travis v. Sup. Ct. Comm. on Pro. Conduct , 306 S.W.3d 3, 7 (Ark. 2009) (); 3 Ronald E. Mallen, Legal Malpractice § 21:8 (2022 ed.) ("[A]n attorney is liable for all damages proximately caused by the wrongful act or omission," though the "application of these rules depends on the nature of the injury."). If Gerber can also demonstrate that it "would not have incurred the fees in the absence of the [firm's] negligence," it will have completed the necessary causal chain. Gefre v. Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP , 306 P.3d 1264, 1281 (Alaska 2013) (quotation marks omitted); see also Madden , 58 S.W.3d at 353 ().
It makes sense that proving a case-within-a-case is not a hard-and-fast requirement because an attorney's negligence can result in injuries other than a loss in court. Take the Restatement's example of an attorney's negligent disclosure of a company's trade secrets. Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers § 53 cmt. b (Am. Law Inst. 2000). In those circumstances, even though there is no case within a case, the negligent attorney "might [still] be liable for the harm to the client's business caused by the disclosure," presumably by establishing an unbroken causal chain between the attorney's negligence and some identifiable monetary harm, such as a loss of profits. Id. If the injury has nothing to do with an underlying judgment, in other words, the plaintiff can establish proximate cause "without proving the results of a trial." Id. (emphasis added); see also Suder v. Whiteford, Taylor & Preston, LLP , 413 Md. 230, 992 A.2d 413, 421 (2010) ().
Of the few courts that have addressed a situation like this one, most have reached the same conclusion that we do: corrective fees are available, even without an underlying judgment.1 Indeed, Mitchell Williams cannot identify a single court of last resort that has gone the other way. But see Hedrick v. Tabbert , 722 N.E.2d 1269, 1273 (Ind. Ct. App. 2000) (). There is no reason to believe that the Arkansas Supreme Court will be the first.
Even if Gerber can establish proximate cause, did it make it to the courthouse in time? Before the district court, Mitchell Williams argued that all of the allegedly negligent disclosures fell beyond Arkansas's three-year statute of limitations. See Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-105. The district court disagreed, and so do we.
The only acts falling within Arkansas's three-year statute of limitations were those that occurred on or after January 15, 2016, which was exactly three years before...
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