By Katheryn Hayes Tucker
[email protected]

The Georgia Court of Appeals stepped into a battle between lawyers Wednesday, reversing a trial judge's disqualification of counsel and providing guidance on the right to choose lawyers.
Chief Judge Stephen Dillard said courts must proceed with “great caution” in such matters because the right to counsel is “an important interest.”
Disqualification has an “immediate adverse effect on the client by separating him from counsel of his choice,” Dillard said, adding that “inevitably causes delay.” In such a case, the client “may suffer the loss of time and money in finding new counsel and may lose the benefit of its longtime counsel's specialized knowledge of its operations.”
“Disqualification of chosen counsel should be seen as an extraordinary remedy and should be granted sparingly,” Dillard said.
Writing for a panel that included Presiding Judge Billy Ray and Judge Tripp Self, Dillard reversed Cobb County Superior Court Judge Lark Ingram's order granting one prominent Marietta law firm's motion to disqualify another one.
“Because the trial court failed to first assess whether the appellees waived the opportunity to move for disqualification of counsel before granting the motion, we vacate the trial court's order and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion,” Dillard said.
The case will return to Ingram's courtroom to address timeliness of the motion to disqualify counsel in a long-running dispute over property following a death.
On the winning side of the point is the Gregory Doyle Calhoun & Rogers law firm in Marietta, representing Zelda Enterprises, a family limited partnership.

“This is the result we expected,” Melissa Gilbert of Gregory Doyle said Thursday. She handled the case with Todd Hatcher of her firm.
Gilbert said they had negotiated, mediated and litigated for two years and eight months before the other side switched law firms, to Moore Ingram Johnson & Steele.
Just when it looked to Gilbert like the case was about to settle, the Moore Ingram firm moved to disqualify Gregory Doyle firm because of a previous consult on the same topic. That was around Christmas 2015. Gilbert appealed the disqualification.
“My clients have now been sitting there waiting. This completely stalled the case,” Gilbert said. “This has caused prejudice to my clients that's enormous because they have had justice delayed all this time while we argue over this issue.”
The lawyers who lost the point—Tammi Brown and Carey Olson of the Moore Ingram firm—said they will again ask the judge to disqualify the Gregory Doyle firm because of the prior consult with their clients: Tracy McCall Guarino, Angie McCall Sumpter and Charles Wesley McCall Jr. The fight will continue over whether the delay of more than two years made the motion to disqualify untimely.
“It's just a very important issue that should be brought to the forefront of attorneys' minds,” Olson said. “It should be the firms' responsibility to make sure conflicts are identified rather than shifting the burden to my clients.”
The case is Zelda Enterprises v. Guarino, No. A16A1437.