Ethics

This will be of limited interest to those outside California, but I had an interesting conversation today and wanted to post something having no possible connection to the OLC memos, so here goes:

Suppose you represent a client in a civil case and the client perjures himself at his deposition.  You remonstrate but he doesn't care.  Under the CA rules you may not disclose his perjury. Now suppose you are heading to trial and the client gives every indication of planning to repeat his perjury.  You remonstrate; he doesn't care.  You go to the judge and say "for ethical reasons I want out."  The judge says "no."  You remonstrate some more; same result. 

May you put on the case and allow the client to testify in the narrative (as we do out here), avoiding any use of the perjured testimony, or is that procedure only applicable to criminal cases?  I had thought it would be OK to use the narrative approach in a civil case (so long as the court played ball with the narrative testimony, but that is probably discretionary), but some pretty well-informed people think otherwise. 

My view was that the ethical prohibition is on introducing or using the false testimony and that prohibition applies equally to civil and criminal cases; the criminal part is relevant only insofar as it heightens significantly the accused's interest in testifying.  I think the text of the rules point this way but I don't believe I have seen this come up on the civil side in CA. 

Thoughts, CA mavens?

DM