of imputed knowledge from an attorney's former firm follows him to whichever firm he subsequently joins would also pose insurmountable practical problems in screening for conflicts. When an attorney joins a new law firm, he normally discloses the names of former clients who will create a conflict for the new firm if it takes the opposing side in future litigation. But there is no way, when an attorney joins a new firm, that he or she can provide that new firm with notice of "imputed knowledge"that is, names of clients and the nature of their matters the attorney never knew about or worked on while at the former firm. Application of the imputed knowledge doctrine under these circumstances would mean that the attorney's association with the new firmrepresented by a law firm to which the attorney previously was a member. If the attorney can establish, to the trial court's satisfaction, that information about the opposing party substantially related to the matter at issue in the new lawsuit would not normally have been imparted to the attorney while he or she was a member of the law firm that had represented the opposing party, there is no basis to impute that information to the attorney and, thus, no basis to disqualify the attorney.
That an attorney should be able to rebut the presumption of knowledge imputed as a result of the attorney's former affiliation with a law firm that represented the opposing party is important for the reasons stated by the majority. However, we must recognize that