Covington Challenges its Disqualification in Representing Minnesota
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On Wednesday, Covington & Burling filed an application at Minnesota's Court of Appeals seeking permission to appeal the decision of a lower court that disqualified the law firm from representing Minnesota against 3M citing ‘conflict of interests.'
Covington, which continues to deny any conflict of interest, criticized the lower court ruling saying, “The effect of the ruling is to reward 3M for an inexplicable sixteen-month delay in moving to disqualify at the expense of an innocent party, the State of Minnesota.”
The state of Minnesota also filed documents for an appealing the order of the lower court.
Minnesota solicitor general Alan Gilbert said in a letter to the court that 3M did not request the disqualification of Covington until at least 50 depositions had taken place in the environmental lawsuit. In its filing, Covington claimed that when it began representing the state of Minnesota in the environmental lawsuit, 3M was no longer its client. The law firm also said that it had decided to accept the case on behalf of the state of Minnesota only after concluding that its earlier representation of 3M “was not substantially related” to the issues at hand.
However, in the ruling by which Covington was disqualified from representing the state of Minnesota, the judge had observed that Covington “has even gone so far to seek discovery on the very issues on which it previously counseled 3M.”
Timothy Hester, the chair of Covington's management committee said in a statement, “We respectfully disagree with last week's ruling in the State of Minnesota lawsuit against 3M …. 3M was a former Covington client when we took on the representation of the State (itself a long-time client), and the prior representation identified by 3M was not substantially related to the new matter, and in any event 3M waived any right to seek disqualification by its unjustified 15-month delay in objecting.”
The case is State of Minnesota v. 3M Company, Hennepin County District Court, No. 27-CV-10-28862.
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