A 5-2 Supreme Court today holds that a client’s claim against her former lawyer for conversion — based on allegations the lawyer refused to return unearned fees after his representation was terminated — might not be covered by a special statute of limitations applicable to “[a]n action against an attorney for a wrongful act or omission, other than for actual fraud, arising in the performance of professional services.” In Lee v. Hanley, the majority opinion — written by Justice Goodwin Liu for Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Justices Kathryn Werdegar, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, and Leondra Kruger — concludes that the statute applies “when the merits of the claim will necessarily depend on proof that an attorney violated a professional obligation — that is, an obligation the attorney has by virtue of being an attorney — in the course of providing professional services.” Some of the client’s claims are barred under this rule, the majority says, and the statute of limitations “cover[s] more than claims for legal malpractice,” but proof of the conversion allegation “may not depend on the assertion that [the attorney] violated a professional obligation.”
Justice Carol Corrigan dissents for herself and Justice Ming Chin. The majority looks mostly to the statute’s purpose and legislative history, which Justice Corrigan says is an analytic mistake. The case “is largely resolved by the language of the statute, which the majority opinion discusses only sparingly,” she concludes. According to her, the statute should “govern[ ] any claim against an attorney, except for actual fraud, that is based on the attorney’s wrongful conduct in performing professional services” and “the wrongful conduct must have some close and logical relationship to those professional services.”
The court affirms the Court of Appeal, Fourth District, Division Three. It disapproves a 2014 opinion by the Court of Appeal, Second District, Division Three, and a 1988 decision of the Court of Appeal, First District, Division Four.