information, confidential or otherwise, about Aerojet. According to his declaration, Hackard departed the Holliman Hackard firm in 1989, without taking any files or written materials about Aerojet with him.
In March of 1998, numerous residents and occupants of the area surrounding Aerojet's disposal site filed the current suit against Aerojet and other defendants, alleging negligence, strict liability, trespass, nuisance, fraudulent concealment, unfair business practice, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The plaintiffs were represented by three law firms, one of which was Hackard's new law firm of Hackard, Holt & Heller (Hackard Holt).
The first amended complaint in the underlying suit alleges that since 1951, defendants have released and improperly used and disposed of toxic chemicals, resulting in contamination of the groundwater and surrounding soils. It further alleges that defendantstrust, and in turn the public's trust, in a legal system that would permit such a situation to exist without the former client's consent." (Formal Opn. No.1998-152, supra, at p. IIA-418.)
Once an attorney departs the firm, however, a blanket rule to prevent future breaches of confidentiality is not necessary because the departed attorney no longer has presumptive access to the secrets possessed by the former firm. The court need no longer rely on the fiction of imputed knowledge to safeguard client confidentiality. Instead, the court may undertake a dispassionate assessment of whether and to what extent the attorney, during his tenure with the former firm, was reasonably likely to have obtained confidential information material to the current lawsuit.
Disqualification based solely on the presumptive taint of imputed knowledge from