Ethics

Earlier I wondered what gave the circuit jurisdiction to review the district court's disqualification decision. Absent a final judgment, mandamus, or permission for an interlocutory appeal, these decisions - pro or con - are not reviewable, thereby depriving us (especially those of us with casebooks to edit) of appellate opinions on an important issue and making federal trial judges essentially unreviewable.

Thanks to an email answer from the winning lawyer, I now know what I should have realized from the text. The case was an effort to compel arbitration. The resisting party refused to arbitrate as long as Blank Rome represented the opponent, claiming a conflict. The trial judge had to decide whether to compel arbitration and overrule the objection to Blank Rome. The court said the firm was disqualified (the merits are a separate matter). That was a final judgement and appealable.

The irony is that a trial judge's decision framed in the context of a motion to arbitrate is appealable but the same decision if the case were before him on the merits would not be. 

In NY, by the way, for better or worse, disqualification claims in arbitration have to be decided collaterally in court, not by the arbitrator. This is unnecessarily expensive and not the rule everywhere.