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Baker & Hostetler has failed to convince a California judge to disqualify Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht from a $15 million lawsuit that accuses Baker & Hostetler of bungling a potential malpractice case against Jones Day.

An Orange County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday that available evidence didn’t show a conflict arising from the move by Baker & Hostetler’s former appellate group co-chair Tom Warren to Pierce Bainbridge. The suit, by Adam DeVone, who owned an insurance brokerage known as PenBen, faults Baker & Hostetler for not holding Jones Day accountable for PenBen’s loss at trial to a group of former employees who allegedly poached clients on their way out the door.

Judge Glenda Sanders of the Superior Court of Orange County, California, also said it didn’t appear that other Pierce Bainbridge lawyers, in their past employment, had any role in the allegedly flawed advice at the heart of the case. Baker & Hostetler had argued that Pierce Bainbridge founder John Pierce, who worked with former Baker & Hostetler partner Michael Mortenson when both were at K&L Gates, was “looped in” on the bad advice. The firm also asserted that Pierce Bainbridge partner Jonathan Sorkowitz had provided Mortenson with research that indicated it was too late to sue Jones Day.

The judge rejected arguments related to all three lawyers, however. Warren isn’t involved with the suit against Baker & Hostetler and is “at best, a tangential witness,” she wrote. There’s no evidence to show Pierce had actually been “looped in” to giving the bad advice, only that it was contemplated that he would be, and K&L Gates isn’t a party to the suit, the decision said.

As for Sorkowitz, he was an “after-the-fact bearer of potentially bad news concerning the advice allegedly given” to wait to sue Jones Day, but not involved in giving the allegedly bad advice, Sanders wrote.

The decision was without prejudice, with the judge saying the disqualification effort could be picked back up if new, relevant evidence came to light.

In the underlying complaint, DeVone says he was represented by Jones Day in a lawsuit against former employees of PenBen who allegedly stole $15 million in business on their way out the door. The 2015 trial was a catastrophe, however, with DeVone recovering nothing and the former team being awarded $200,000 in counterclaims for defamation, according to DeVone’s suit.

DeVone retained K&L Gates in 2016 to appeal the case, and its partner Mortenson led the matter, the complaint states. Mortenson moved to Baker & Hostetler later that year and said they would sue Jones Day once the appeal was over, but by the time the trial court’s decision was affirmed in 2018, it was too late, the complaint said.

“The California Supreme Court had held long prior that the pendency of an appeal as of right does not toll the statute of limitations for an attorney malpractice action arising at the trial level in the same case,” DeVone said in his suit.

DeVone seeks $15.2 million, plus “hundreds of thousands” of dollars in legal fees.

A Baker & Hostetler representative and attorneys at Umberg Zipser who represented the firm didn’t respond to comment requests. A representative for Jones Day also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We and our clients are very pleased with Judge Sanders’ thoughtful decision, which resoundingly rejected Baker’s disqualification theories,” said Pierce Bainbridge partner Craig Bolton, who is leading the DeVone case. “We look forward to proceeding on the merits, and seeking justice for our client,” Bolton added.