UBS Financial Services, Inc. filed a lawsuit this week in U.S. federal court against Anthony Ostlund Baer & Louwagie, P.A. claiming that, contrary to applicable ethical standards of professional conduct, AOBL, having represented USBFS is now suing USBFS in a “substantially related” case. USBFS seeks an injunction against AOBL knocking them out of the later case.
The key, of course, is “what is ‘substantially related'”? Faegre Baker Daniels, counsel for USBFS (along with a Long Beach, CA firm), takes the position that the apparent key role of one USBFS employee in the former case and in the latter case, among other overlaps, make the two cases sufficiently “substantially related” to require AOBL’s disqualification (See Complaint, Paras. 23, 28-34.)
The case has been assigned to one U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Schiltz (D. Minn.) and, by chance, the earlier USBFS case was before the same judge.