Satina v. New York City Human Resources Administration

Filing 51

OPINION AND ORDER re: 45 MOTION to Disqualify Counsel . filed by New York City Human Resources Administration. The Court DENIES the City's Motion to Disqualify Counsel. The Clerk is directed to terminate the motion at Dkt. 45. A premotion conference on Satina's request for leave to file a second amended complaint will go forward on November 10, 2015, at 11 AM in Courtroom 14C. (As further set forth in this Order), ( Pre-Motion Conference set for 11/10/2015 at 11:00 AM in Courtroom 14C, 500 Pearl Street, New York, NY 10007 before Judge Paul A. Crotty.) (Signed by Judge Paul A. Crotty on 11/2/2015) (lmb)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

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USDC SDNY
DOCUMENT
ELECTRONICALLY FILED
DOC #: _________________
DATE FILED: November 2, 2015

SANDRA SATINA,
Plaintiff,

14Civ.3152 (PAC)

-against-

OPINION AND ORDER

NEW YORK CITY HUMAN RESOURCES
ADMINISTRATION,
Defendant.

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HONORABLE PAUL A. CROTTY, United States District Judge:
Plaintiff Sandra Satina sues Defendant New York City Human Resources Administration
("the City") alleging discrimination on the basis ofher ethnicity, race, national origin, and
gender in violation ofTitle VII, state, and local law. The City moves to disqualify Satina's
counsel, Samuel Okwudili Maduegbuna. (Dkt. 45.) The Court denies the motion.

I.

Background
Satina is a Hispanic woman who worked as an Associate Fraud Investigator in the Human

Resources Administration. (Dkt. 48, Exh. 2.) She alleges that after she complained that her pay was
less than male employees, Executive Deputy Commissioner James Sheehan and other managers
retaliated against her by demoting her, reducing her pay, and subjecting her to a hostile work
environment. (Jd.) She also alleges she was demoted due to her race and complaints. (Jd.)
In an earlier action, Maduegbuna represented another plaintiff, Alida Mattos, in a similar

discrimination suit against the City. (Dkt. 48, ,-r 7.) That suit settled prior to discovery. (!d. at ,-r 9.)
Mattos was Satina's direct supervisor, and Mattos reviewed and signed several performance
evaluations of Satina. (Dkt. 46, Exh. B, F.) Maduegbuna has declared that he is not aware of any

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privileged information that he gained during his representation of Mattos that would be relevant
in this litigation. (Dkt. 48, ~ 16.)
II.

Legal Standard
While district courts have broad discretion to disqualify attorneys, motions to disqualify

are disfavored because they impinge on a party's right to employ counsel of choice. See A.I
Credit Corp. v. Providence Washington Ins. Co., 96 Civ. 7955(AGS)(AJP), 1997 WL 231127, at

*1 (S.D.N.Y. May 7, 1997); see also Hempstead Video, Inc. v. Inc. Vill. of Valley Stream, 409
F.3d 127, 132 (2d Cir. 2005).
The Second Circuit has recognized that both concurrent and successive representation
may require an attorney's disqualification to prevent the attorney from "us[ing] a client's
privileged information against that client." Hempstead Video, 409 F.3d at 133. In the case of
successive representation, the Court may disqualify an attorney where:
(1) the moving party is a former client of the adverse party's counsel;

(2) there is a substantial relationship between the subject matter of the counsel's
prior representation of the moving party and the issues in the present lawsuit; and
(3) the attorney whose disqualification is sought had access to, or was likely to
have had access to, relevant privileged information in the course of his prior
representation of the client.

Id.
III.

Analysis
It is obvious the City cannot meet the threshold requirement; it is not a former client of

Maduegbuna. Instead, the City attempts to raise disqualification on behalf of Mattos, whose
involvement the City describes as "tantamount to that of a defendant." (Dkt. 47 at 2, 11.) The
City argues that Mattos's and Satina's interests are "materially adverse" because Satina's case
"relies on attacking the accuracy and legality of Mattos's actions in supervising plaintiff and
giving plaintiffnegative perfmmance evaluations." (Id. at 11-12.) But that is simply not so.
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The City cites Skidmore v. Warburg Dillion Read LLC, No. 99-cv-1 0525(NRB), 2001
WL 504876 (S.D.N.Y. May 11 , 2001), for the proposition that parties can raise disqualification
on behalf ofnonparties. (Dkt. 47 at 8.) But no Second Circuit case has ever approved of such
third-party disqualification motions. See United States v. Rogers, 9 F .3d 1025, 1031 (2d Cir.
1993) ("No case has been called to our attention, and we are aware of none, in which an attorney
has been disqualified on grounds of conflicting prior representation solely at the behest of a
person other than the former client or its privy .... '[A]s a general rule, courts do not disqualify
an attorney on the grounds of conflict of interest unless the former client moves for
disqualification."') (quoting United States v. Cunningham, 672 F.2d 1064, 1072 (2d Cir. 1982)).
And Hempstead Video-which explicitly limits disqualification to cases where "the moving
party is a former client of the adverse party's counsel," 409 F.3d at 133- has superseded

Skidmore. Since the City is not Maduegbuna's former client, it cannot move for disqualification.
Even if the City could move for Maduegbuna's disqualification on the basis ofhis
previous representation of Mattos, the City's motion would still fail. Mattos is not "tantamount to
... a defendant." Mattos and Satina both claim the City discriminated against them. The mere
fact that Mattos supervised Satina during the period they both allegedly suffered discrimination
does not render their interests materially adverse. Indeed, it seems likely that Mattos would
testify in Satina's favor. But even ifMaduegbuna were to impeach Mattos or otherwise argue
that Mattos was complicit in the City's employment discrimination against Satina (an unlikely
scenario given that both Mattos and Satina allege they were discriminated against for being
Hispanic women), that alone would not render Maduegbuna's representation of Satina materially
adverse to Mattos's interests. Such a scenario "may be embarrassing to [Mattos]; it may even be

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unseemly to treat a former client as a hostile witness. [But] no tangible prejudice ... would result

... ."Skidmore, 2001 WL 504876, at *5. 1
IV.

Conclusion

The Court DENIES the City's Motion to Disqualify Counsel. The Clerk is directed to
tenninate the motion at Dkt. 45. A premotion conference on Satina's request for leave to file a
second amended complaint will go forward on November 10, 2015, at 11

AM

in Courtroom 14C.

Dated: New York, New York
November 2, 2015
SO ORDERED

PAULA. CROTTY
United States District Judge

1 Skidmore

is instructive, though not for the reasons asserted by the City. In Skidmore, two men, James Skidmore
and Hiram Matthews, were fired from their jobs as corporate-bonds salesmen at UBS Securities. !d. at *I. Both
Skidmore and Matthews hired the Law Offices ofNeal Brickman to represent them (separately) in negotiating a
severance package with UBS or, alternatively, filing an age-discrimination suit. Id. Both Skidmore and Matthews
did sue (again, separately). Jd. Matthews settled. !d. In his complaint, Skidmore alleged Matthews told him about
discriminatory comments made by a UBS supervisor. !d. In deposition testimony, Matthews denied he had ever
heard such comments or told Skidmore about them. !d. UBS moved to disqualify Brickman on the basis that the
litigation would likely require him to cross-examine Matthews, his former client, to recant his testimony. !d.
Although the district court permitted UBS to move to disqualify Brickman despite not being a former client, id. at
*3, it denied the motion, id. at *5. First, the court noted that Brickman's representation of Skidmore could not
disadvantage Matthews's case against UBS because Matthews had already settled. Id. at *4. Second, the court
reasoned that Brickman's impeachment of Matthews, though perhaps embarrassing, did not render his representation
of Skidmore "materially adverse" to Matthews's interests. Jd. at *5.

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