“As one might gather from the one published opinion generated in this saga, Rus, Miliband & Smith v. Conkle & Olesten, [2003] 113 Cal.App.4th 656, the Conkle law firm were the heroes of the battle against the accounting firm’s malpractice insurer. It was the Conkle law firm who took an insurance bad faith case previously thought to be a loser and over which the accounting firm itself expressed severe doubts (doubts so severe that its previous law firm felt that it could no longer adequately represent the accounting firm against the insurer) and won the summary adjudication that led to the establishment of the [$1.875 million settlement] fund in the first place. It was the Conkle firm, after all, who managed to precipitate the settlement that removed the $40 million judgment then hanging over the head of the accounting firm (contingent on suing the malpractice insurer) and actually wring some money from the malpractice insurer.”
Signed by Presiding Justice David G. Sills, Justice Eileen C. Moore and Justice Kathleen E. O’Leary, of the Court of Appeal of the State of California for the Fourth District, Division Three